


Pathei Mathos

by akisawana



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: AU-No War, Angst, Mpreg, Other, Whump, baby robots, piles of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2013-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-28 09:28:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 53,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/990426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisawana/pseuds/akisawana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where do baby robots come from? Why do Seekers have cockpits? How come so many Decepticon names have Greek roots? Two of those three questions are answered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. αʹ

**Author's Note:**

> Written for robotbigbang. A glossary of terms used is the final chapter.

Thundercracker hadn’t missed one of the Prime’s parties since his honeymoon.  
Usually, he was there as security – the ruling dyad loved to include the people in their celebrations, a great change from their predecessors. Without a vetted guest list, the security force ballooned, and Thundercracker was always willing to cover the weak spots. When he couldn’t get a slot on the roster, Starscream dragged him along, on the very firm basis that Thundercracker had promised to share in his joy and his pain.  
Tonight, though, he was invited on his own merits. They were celebrating the survival of Hot Rod and Galvatron, heirs to the thrones, and Skywarp, Megatron’s pallakos who took the shot meant for them. Thundercracker had been there, had hustled the two near-adults off to safety as Skywarp laughed off the blasts that would have torn through the nipio’ still-fragile plating. It wasn’t a large party, just the Senators and the Prime, the Lord High Protector and the Ministeries. Skywarp hadn’t needed more than a shower after, and Ultra Magnus had thrown the would-be revolutionaries in jail so fast, Prowl hadn’t even finished the paperwork. Then, before the giddy rush of survival had worn off, Optimus Prime had ordered high grade and ener-twists.  
Skywarp seemed to be having fun, at least, and Thundercracker gladly let him bask in the spotlight. He and Skywarp had never been particularly close, not since Thundercracker had come home from a two meta-cycle tour of the Umi planet to find a stranger living in his spare room. Still, Skywarp seemed nice enough, and Starscream liked him a whole lot better than either of his two adelfi.  
That had been a meta-cycle ago, and in the meantime they had been ships passing on the dark side, their schedules never quite lining up outside of work. Starscream was disappointed, Thundercracker knew, but tried to hide it. Starscream didn’t need to be a soldier to understand the time it took to return to normal society.  
Starscream was talking to Ratchet on the other side of the room, the old Senator looking less cranky than usual with a drink in his hand. Ratchet had been a Senator for as long as Thundercracker had known there was a Senator from Simfur, but lately he’d been shadowed by a white mech that was missing. Thundercracker visually scanned the room behind his cube, catching sight of Drift by the bar, farther from Ratchet than Thundercracker had ever seen him, and Thundercracker had just spent two deca-cycles guarding Ratchet’s door while Breakdown was on his own honeymoon.  
Thundercracker sidled up next to Drift, who gave him the kind of look he usually got on a battlefield. “Having fun?” Thundercracker asked.  
Drift offered him a weak smile. “The Prime does enjoy celebrating.”  
“Yes,” Thundercracker agreed. “Throws more parties than a Praxian partybot. This is one of the better ones.” He leaned backwards, his elbows on the bar, and waited for the mech behind it to have a free minutes.  
Drift’s optics skittered over the crowd, and Thundercracker knew exactly what he was thinking. “I would have though you more popular. The great war hero.” The last four words weren’t sarcastic, for once.  
Thundercracker shrugged. “Soldiers who swear to Ministers are about as popular as secretaries with criminal records. Can I buy you a drink?”  
“I thought it was an open bar,” Drift said, shocked.  
Thundercracker could have resisted the urge to facepalm, but the kid was so…something. “That’s the joke,” he said from behind his hand, then waved two fingers to the now-free bartender.  
“Oh. Oh.” Drift smiled. “Sorry, I guess everyone else is so, sorry. I can’t recognize when someone is being nice to me.”  
“I don’t blame you,” Thundercracker said. “I honestly think some of those Senators have lost their kindness subroutines if one of their constituents isn’t involved.”  
Swerve brought over two cubes of bismuth carbonate for Thundercracker. “Are you inducting another member of your club?” he asked.  
“I suppose,” Thundercracker answered, being sure to leave a generous tip in Swerve’s jar. Most of the mechs here, Starscream included, were terrible tippers, when they even remembered to pay for a drink and that energon didn’t magically appear in their hands.  
Swerve grinned at Drift, who was looking a bit shell-shocked. “Good. This kid looks like he could use a friend.” He handed one of the cubes to Drift, and one to Thundercracker.  
“Thanks,” Thundercracker said. Swerve drifted off to pour a drink for another customer, and Thundercracker did a quick survey of the room.  
“Who else is in this club?” Drift asked, sounding a little nervous.  
“Oh, it’s not so official,” Thundercracker said. “There’s just so few of us who aren’t lying little lugnuts, we need to stick together. Cyclonus is one.” He nodded to the Polyhexian senator, sitting at a table on the other side of the bar. He was also scanning the room, but when his optics met Thundercracker’s, he dropped them to frown into his drink. “And Skywarp, over there talking to Senator Shockwave. Let’s go rescue him.”  
“Rescue him from what?” Drift asked, but he followed Thundercracker readily enough.  
“Have you ever talked to Shockwave?”

* * *

  
“How long will you be gone?” Starscream asked.  
“I don’t know,” Skywarp said, adding another datapad to the box. “As long as it takes. There’s five of them to get set up.”  
“Hmph.” Starscream folded his arms. “And you’re the best one to do this?”  
“Yep. Who else do you know that got out?”  
“Still.” Starscream sighed. “I don’t understand why he wants you. There has to be someone else.”  
“Because one of them’s an outlier, and you know what they do to outliers.”  
“True.” Skywarp’s genei had belonged to a sect that didn’t look too kindly to outliers. Skywarp himself would have spent most of his youth locked in a closet if he hadn’t been able to teleport into Starscream’s house across the street. They hadn’t been too keen on much of modern society, hence the need for someone to stay with the rescued nipii –two of which were technically adults.  
Skywarp had lived with Starscream until Thundercracker came home from the war. Starscream wasn’t sure the teleporter had ever fully mastered things like household budgets and programming the videorecorder. As strange as that sect’s beliefs were, few nipii raised in it walked away as adults, and fewer of those had survived the violence of an exorcism. Putting Skywarp in charge would be like the blind leading the blind. Off a cliff. Megatron indulged Skywarp more than Starscream ever had.  
“Look out for Megatron for me?” Skywarp asked, sealing up the box.  
Starscream snorted, “No.”  
“C’mon, don’t let the Senate run him off a cliff.” With Skywarp’s mess packed away in the box, there was no trace of him in the simple, tastefully appointed apartments of the Lord High Protector. Starscream tried not to let that color his view of Megatron; Skywarp was happy, and quite frankly too stupid to hide it if Megatron wasn’t treating him well. But there wasn’t anyone else to look out for Skywarp. Except Starscream, because Skywarp couldn’t be trusted to take care of himself. Starscream didn’t know if it was because of his genei, or because of some native processor defect. Given Skywarp’s chemistry experiments, he tended to side with his upbringing, though Thundercracker would sigh and compare Skywarp to a scientist friend who could never quite remember his own address.  
“He can hold his own against them,” Starscream said. “Don’t forget to call.”  
“You know I will.” Skywarp grinned and slung an arm around Starscream’s shoulders. “Don’t worry so much. I’ll be fine.”  
That would be the last anyone saw him for three paracycles.


	2. βʹ

Three paracycles ago, Thundercracker would never be breaking into a discreet medical facility with his sieziegos. Starscream may have been the Minister of War, but he’d never actually served. Skywarp was involved, though, and that meant Starscream had his pedes on the ground for this one.  
It wasn’t too strange for Skywarp to write instead of use his still-unfamiliar comm. array, Starscream said. But something about the note had alarmed him. Thundercracker didn’t need to understand whatever hidden message there was, not when it had come from half a planet away from where Skywarp was supposed to be, not when it had come to a mech that Skywarp had barely spoken to off-duty.  
After some of the missions on the Umi planet, this was almost easy, and the two of them went in alone. Thundercracker didn’t ask where the keycard had come from, and Starscream didn’t ask about the weapons.  
The door opened easily to Starscream’s keycard. He stuck his head in and swore profusely. “Thundercracker!” he yelled down the hallway. “Get over here!”  
Thundercracker looked down the hallway one last time but no- the research facility relied heavily on the automated security system Starscream had hacked. Nobody was coming. He shouldered his rifle and hurried to the door Starscream was standing in front of.  
It opened into a cell, one wall a tinted window, allowing the occupant to look out unseen. There was a Seeker-sized berth, a desk with a console, a vidscreen, a couch…and a pile of scuffed black plating barricaded behind a broken shelf.  
Skywarp was black and purple and totally unsuited for the subtle cruelty of court, but at the same time nobody quite disliked him –between Megatron’s patronage and his own sense of humor, it just wasn’t worth the energy. Thundercracker liked him well enough, and once they’d spent an entire ceremonial dinner snarking together about the Praxian embassy in the back of the room with the other nobodies.  
He’d asked about Skywarp when the Seeker had disappeared. Starscream, who’d been Skywarp’s friend since the back end of forever and introduction to Megatron, said that he was helping a family of walkaways from the unchanged adapt to normal life, as Starscream had once helped Skywarp. Starscream had received a few letters that he frowned at, Megatron a few more. Thundercracker himself had been sent one eventually, a short note about how boring it was, and how he wished Starscream’s sieziegos could save him.  
That had set Starscream off, since saving Skywarp was his exclusive domain, ending in this midnight raid on Jhiaxus’ research facility, and Starscream pushing him towards the huddled black form on the floor.  
“Get him up, see if he can move,” Starscream hissed. Thundercracker knelt in front of the barricade, considering the situation. He could see one crimson optic, a little too dim to be healthy, peering around the side. Surely Skywarp recognized his oldest friend, so why was he hiding? He must have a good reason. Starscream turned on the console and began typing furiously, keys clicking fast as acid pellets. Thundercracker knew the rage wasn’t directed at him and he still felt like joining Skywarp.  
“Hey, Skywarp,” he started, a little lamely to his audials, “it’s me. Thundercracker. I came with Starscream.”  
“I know who you are,” Skywarp whispered. “Are you real?”  
After three paracycles missing, Primus alone knowing what happened, Thundercracker couldn’t be too offended by the question. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re real. We’re really getting you out of here.”  
Skywarp looked wary at Thundercracker’s offered hand. Skywarp, who more than once had been tricked into believing someone wanted to be his friend, when really they wanted a back door to Megatron’s audial. “You could be another hologram,” he said.  
“Would a hologram know what really happened the time you fell off my roof?” Starscream said, plugging a dataslug into the console. “We’re on a time limit here.”  
Skywarp put his hand in Thundercracker’s, and Thundercracker helped him over the barricade. “Easy, easy,” he murmured when the black Seeker tripped over nothing. He wrapped Skywarp’s arm around his own neck, his arm around Skywarp’s waist, supporting him as much as he needed. “Starscream, he’s hurt.”  
“Do we need to carry him?” Starscream demanded, staring at the console like that would make it download faster.  
“I’m fine,” Skywarp said. “Just, my gyros are fragged.”  
Thundercracker had a brief vision of running from drone guards, Skywarp tripping into him and the two of them taking down Starscream, sliding down the slick hallway floor and coming to a stop at the feet of an Enforcer or two. “I can get him myself,” he said. Skywarp didn’t argue as Thundercracker hoisted him on his back, between his wings. Starscream flashed the two of them a quick frown.  
Starscream didn’t say anything, though, just yanked the dataslug out of the console nearly hard enough to snap it. “Let’s go,” he said, holding his borrowed rifle at the ready and leading the way out into the corridor, all white ceramic and the faint chemotraces of medical-grade solvent and greenish lighting. Starscream moved swiftly for his chosen exit, no hesitation but no fear. Thundercracker, burdened with another mech, nearly had to run to keep up, but keep up he did.  
Starscream led them out to the roof, and Skywarp lifted his head from Thundercracker’s neck at the caress of night air. “Our pickup’s in fifteen minutes. Try not to die before then,” Starscream said, hands gentle as he helped Skywarp off of Thundercracker’s back to sit on the roof, leaning against a large metal…box. Part of the ventilation system, maybe. Thundercracker just knew it hummed, and Skywarp’s plating rattled against it erratically as he shook.  
“This is really happening,” he said. “You really came.”  
“Of course I came for you, airhead,” Starscream sniffed, standing watch at the edge of the roof.  
“Are you hurt anywhere?” Thundercracker rumbled, because Skywarp’s impending nervous breakdown needed to wait until he was sure the newly-freed Seeker wasn’t going to keel over in the middle of it.  
Skywarp shook his head. “They did something, I can’t feel anything,” he said slowly. “I don’t exist.”  
Thundercracker led him through the careful flexing of each major joint, and ran his own hands across each armor plate. No fluids were leaking, nothing seemed torn, and Thundercracker guessed that Jhiaxus had employed a sensor block, to deaden the sensation without damaging motion. Skywarp’s transformation was disabled, and his thrusters physically plugged. Starscream told them not to mess with anything that wasn’t an emergency.  
“Astrotrain’s bringing Ratchet,” he said, pacing and throwing the occasional glance towards Skywarp. His hands opened and closed in fists a few times. “Try not to die until then. Everything else can wait.”  
“Ratchet?” Skywarp looked up at Thundercracker. “Why would a senator be coming?”  
“To make sure you’re okay.” Thundercracker put his hand on Skywarp’s knee, and though he couldn’t feel it, Skywarp put his own hand on top. “And so the Prime hears from a neutral source, just what he’s arresting Jhiaxus for.”  
“They’re arresting?” Skywarp’s optics, already dim, were starting to go glassy with shock.  
“The Prime and the Lord High Protector personally. Otherwise, they would be here.”  
Skywarp opened his mouth to say something, but Starscream interrupted him with a sharp click. “You are supposed to be not dying,” he said. “Shut up and get on it. We’ll take care of the rest.”  
“We’ll explain later,” Thundercracker said. “Right now, don’t worry about anything. We’ll take care of you from here.”  
Skywarp nodded, and very carefully leaned his body against Thundercracker. “Thank you,” he half-whispered, as Astrotrain came in for a landing.  
Large enough for three Seekers and a swearing Ratchet Astrotrain might be, but it was still best if Thundercracker stayed back, letting Starscream do the concerned-friend hover. And once Astrotrain landed back at the sprawling Palace of Primus, in Lord High Protector Megatron’s crystal garden, Skywarp was loaded up on a rolling medberth and swarmed by Megatron himself.  
There was a place for Thundercracker, close enough as a friend to be there of his own accord, not just as a friend of Starscream’s. That place was outside the door of an extra bedroom, looking generally scary and keeping nosy no-goodniks away. Inside was crowded enough, Megatron and Optimus Prime, Starscream and Ratchet, two of Ratchet’s assistants…Thundercracker would go in later, when there wasn’t such an overwhelming press of bodies surrounding Skywarp. When he wouldn’t be in the way of helping. He resolved to stand outside and wait –he was a soldier, he’d stood outside in worse, for less.  
Soldier discipline didn’t stand up to Skywarp’s panicked shout of “NO.”  
Thundercracker flung in the door and analyzed the situation –Skywarp cowering in a corner, Starscream in front of him screeching at Ratchet, Ratchet yelling right back, while the two assistants tried to fade into the paneling and the two rulers of Cybertron rumbling at each other like oncoming stormclouds. Thundercracker crossed the room before anyone erupted, put his bulk between Skywarp and, well, everyone else. Skywarp, optics now fever-bright, reached for him, closed his hands around Thundercracker’s wrists. “Don’t let them,” he begged, “don’t let them do it, please, don’t let them!”  
“Don’t let them do what?” Thundercracker asked, drawing Skywarp close to him. Nobody seemed to have even noticed his arrival.  
“Don’t let them kill my mori!” Skywarp wailed, collapsing against Thundercracker.  
“Nobody’s going to kill your mori,” Thundercracker said, embracing the black Seeker that sagged limply against him. Dimly, he registered the subject of Ratchet and Starscream’s argument –Starscream was living up to his name, while Ratchet was trying to get him to calm down enough for rational discussion. Silently, Thundercracker wished him luck. “You’re still carrying them?”  
Skywarp nodded, taking one of Thundercracker’s hands and pressing it under his own spark chamber. “The implantation finally took,” he said. “Eight of them, only a deca-cycle old.” Then he frowned, looking up at Thundercracker. “I don’t want them taken away like the others.”  
“Nobody’s going to take them away,” Thundercracker promised, leaving the nebulous “others” to be someone else’s problem. “Why would you think that?”  
“Ratchet said there were too many, that I wasn’t…that it would be dangerous to keep them.”  
“You’re a Seeker, right? Danger is what we do.” Behind him, Starscream’s voice was reaching glass-shattering pitch and volume. Ratchet yelled right back that it was Skywarp’s choice, not Starscream’s. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.” He tugged Skywarp towards the door, trying to not catch anyone’s attention.  
Space-cold darkness washed over him, and a purple flash through his very core, and suddenly he was standing outside in the hall again. Skywarp let go of Thundercracker, swayed on his feet a little, and steadied himself with a hand on the wall.  
Teleporter.  
“This way,” Thundercracker said, leading Skywarp towards a place he knew no-one would think to look. Skywarp didn’t say anything as he followed Thundercracker through the back hallways, down towards where the palace guards spent their downtime. Thundercracker had a dorm room here, though he never used it, and he thought to stash Skywarp there and feed him after their first stop.  
Knockout owed Thundercracker a favor via a circuitous path involving a nurse, a mickey, and a lost bet. Breakdown was the doctor’s sieziegos, as Thundercracker was Starscream’s, and if they had merely been pallakos like Skywarp and Megatron, this might not work. But he was also a decent enough sort when it came to people in trouble, so Thundercracker was confident he wouldn’t turn Skywarp away.  
“Is Skywarp with you?” Starscream comm’ed Thundercracker.  
“Yes,” he said. “I’m taking him to Knockout to get checked out. What was that all about?”  
“Ratchet got Skywarp upset. You keep him safe, I’ll keep them out of your way. They’re about to start searching room by room.”  
“You don’t want us to come back?”  
“No, I want Skywarp to calm down enough to think rationally, which he can’t do in a room full of people.” Starscream sighed over the line. “I’ll explain later, or he will. Don’t let Knockout do anything he doesn’t absolutely need to.”  
“You mean don’t let him extinguish the embers.” Thundercracker paused to give Skywarp a break, pretending to be lost. He didn’t like the sound of Skywarp’s vents from walking such a short distance.  
“Skywarp needs time to think about it,” Starscream said. “I don’t particularly care what he does, but he shouldn’t be making this decision so quickly.”  
“He told me he wanted to keep them.”  
“Exactly. Don’t let anyone scare him out of it. He needs time to think about it, and I intend to give it to him.”  
“You don’t know Knockout very well,” Thundercracker said.  
“No, I don’t.” Starscream sighed over the line again. “Less than you know Skywarp, and that’s saying something.” Starscream didn’t say that Skywarp was his best friend, his little adelfos, and it bothered him that Thundercracker knew him barely at all. He didn’t have to. They’d had that fight enough, and it wasn’t even that he didn’t like Skywarp –but Skywarp was Megatron’s personal guard in addition to his pallakos, where Thundercracker didn’t have a standing assignment. Thundercracker always meant to spend some time with Skywarp outside of work, but then Skywarp had been sent out to help runaways on the strength of a lie.  
And that had led to Skywarp leaning against the wall as they fled the wrath of Ratchet. “I know where we’re going now,” Thundercracker said once Skywarp’s vents had slowed to normal. “This way.”  
Knockout may have been a grounder, but he had Seeker somewhere in his coding; he was all long silver legs, shiny red metal, and well-deserved vanity. “Isn’t it a little early for a bar fight?” he greeted Thundercracker, smirking at the way Skywarp hung off his arm.  
“It wasn’t a fight,” Thundercracker said, half-carrying Skywarp to the closest berth. “Could I trouble my favorite medic to take a look at my friend?”  
“Your favorite medic, hmm?” Knockout asked. His words may have been light and drawled, but his hands were anything but as he helped Skywarp steady himself and initialized the scanner. “What do you want?”  
“Discretion,” Thundercracker said.  
Knockout looked at the scanner and made a thoughtful noise. “Not much to be discreet about,” he said. “You have some heavy traces of zabuyelite in your system but the antidote has already been administered. Everything I can see has been treated. And your tin roof’s rusted, but I’m betting you knew that.”  
“Eight times over,” Skywarp said. “Ratchet must have fixed up everything before he started in on me.”  
“Well, I’m not sure what you want me to do,” Knockout shrugged and put the scanner away. “Everything I could have fixed is fixed already, and for eight embers you’ll want to go to a specialist, which I’m not. Unless you want me to take them all out now.”  
“No!” Skywarp said, cringing away from Knockout.  
Knockout shrugged again and laid a hand on Skywarp, stroking his forearm. “Alright,” he said. “I’m not asking any questions. But you need to get to a specialist, not only because of the number, but zabuyelite can interfere with their development. Not right now this second,” he added, when Skywarp tried to slide off the berth. “Soon, tomorrow, but you have time to rest. Stay here, make Thundercracker bring you a cube, and tell me before you go.”  
“Thank you,” Thundercracker rumbled. “I owe you one.”  
“But I still owe you two, don’t I?” Knockout asked, and smiled. “I’ll give you some privacy.”  
“I don’t want…” Skywarp began.  
“Don’t worry about it,” Thundercracker cut him off. “I’ll go get you that cube, and then we’re going to stay right here until they get around to finding us.”  
“But…okay.” Skywarp laid back.

* * *

  
The ceiling was disturbingly unfamiliar when Skywarp woke, and it took him a klik to remember what had happened.  
He’d sat there and drank the cube until Starscream had swept in. His friend had led Skywarp to a room deep in the Ministry of War, an unused room that once had housed off-duty guards and still contained a berth. Starscream had stayed until Skywarp had fallen offline, talking with Thundercracker quietly in the corner. Thundercracker kept looking at Skywarp the same way Ambulon had.  
And he’d been rescued before that. Rescued and repaired and rescued.  
The Pit was he supposed to do now?  
Fuel. Skywarp had eight tiny embers to take care of. That was what had kept him from popping his own head off, and look where that got him. Safe, with Starscream again. They had saved him,and now he needed to take care of them himself. Skywarp swung his legs off the table and shook his head until his gyros stabilized.  
There was a comm. console in the wall, and Skywarp used it to page Starscream. His friend’s voice was just as irritated as ever.  
“The energon dispenser code is 47489,” Starscream said. “Drink and I’ll be right there.”  
Skywarp punched in the code and it gave him a cube. He sat on the berth, and didn’t think about anything but how awesome it was to drink regular energon that wasn’t drugged. Probably wasn’t drugged. The chance of the energon being drugged was so small it might as well not exist. And even if it was drugged, it probably wasn’t enough zabu to make him woozy.  
It was good energon, made for warriors. It would fuel his embers well. He imagined them learning to drink out of open cubes, wearing them as hats. They would be adorable.  
There was a knock at the door, more giving warning than asking permission, and Starscream opened it.  
“Good morning,” Skywarp said with a smile. He was free and he had embers to take care of and he knew exactly what to do and he could totally do it. It was a good morning.  
“Right,” Starscream said. “Ratchet wants to see you. He promises not to even mention that you have a choice.”  
“Okay.” Skywarp sipped his cube. Delicious, untainted energon.  
Starscream tilted his head. “Are you okay?”  
Skywarp was going to say yes, because he was, but he opened his mouth and all the energon attempted to fly back to its homeland. He leaned forward and did his best to catch it in the cube, and if he was honest, he was rather proud of how much he managed to get in.  
Not all of it though, and Starscream said a bad word or two, then called for Thundercracker’s help. He braced a hand against Skywarp’s shoulder, and patted his back awkwardly, and swore some more. Thundercracker came in with some sparangi, handed two to Starscream and knelt to clean up the floor.  
“I can get that,” Skywarp said, wiping his mouth.  
“Oh no you can’t.” Starscream scrubbed at Skywarp’s knee. “You are going to sit right there and Ratchet is going to come to you.”  
“I’m fine,” Skywarp protested. Starscream gave him a look, and Thundercracker made a sound suspiciously like a giggle.  
“Really, you call this fine? Losing your breakfast all over the floor? That must be some new definition of fine I was previously unaware of. Are there any other words with new meanings I should be updated on?” Starscream attacked Skywarp’s face with the clean corner of the cloth, holding his chin like a vrefos.  
Thundercracker sat back on his heels, grinned up at them, and held his hand out for the soiled sparangi. “Ratchet’s on his way,” he said on his way out to get rid of them. “Try not to kill him, please?”  
After a moment of silence, Skywarp said, “Thank you. For getting me.”  
He was surprised when Starscream grabbed him in a hug, and held him tight. “You utter and complete afthead,” he said, face buried in Skywarp’s shoulder. “Total fragging glitch. I hate you.”  
Skywarp hugged him back. Starscream was cool and solid and reliable and he’d never doubted for a second that his friend would come for him. “I missed you. I knew you would come but I still missed you.”  
“You are more trouble than anyone is ever worth,” Starscream hissed, stroking one of Skywarp’s ailerons. “I can’t take my eyes off of you for a second. I should put you on a leash, I’m never letting you out of my sight ever again for the rest of your life. Which isn’t going to be too much longer you irresponsible rusted morosn, I could just kill you.”  
“I’ll try to do better,” Skywarp said, trying to grin. Starscream had him so everything should be okay. Except it was starting to feel too much like before, when he couldn’t move because someone was holding him down, and they couldn’t give him more zabu because he’d had the max and more. But this was Starscream, and he’d let go if Skywarp asked, wouldn’t he?  
Would he?  
Starscream did, and without being asked. He slapped Skywarp up the back of the head, twice, all noise and no pain. “If you ever do that again, I will end your sorry excuse for an existence.”  
“If he what, is lied to by a Senator with some very good forgeries that there’s a family of walkaways from Sunstorm who need his help living in reality, and one of them also can teleport? And disappears into the laboratory of a mad scientist who forges yet more documents, this time letters from Skywarp to his friends? Is this something that happens to you often?” Ratchet uncrossed his arms and put his hands on his hips; he must have come in when Skywarp was distracted by Starscream. In Skywarp’s defense, Starscream wasn’t much of a hugger. “Such an exciting life you must lead.”  
Thundercracker, arms full of medical equipment, bumped closed the door with his hip and offered Skywarp a grin. “Perils of Iacon,” he said. “This never happens back home in Vos.”  
Ratchet shook his head, and came over stand by the bed. Starscream didn’t move out of his way, and Skywarp felt gratitude well up in his spark, which was stupid because he was perfectly safe. He didn’t need Starscream standing guard and Thundercracker ready to help make an escape. “I want to apologize to you for yesterday,” the doctor said. “I just wanted to make sure you knew what was going on.”  
“It’s okay,” Skywarp said to his feet. “I was pretty out of it.” And honestly, he didn’t remember much between Thundercracker helping him inside Astrotrain and Thundercracker’s hands around his wrists, taking him to Knockout.  
“Now if you’re still set on having these mori,” Ratchet began, “it’s not going to be that much different from a normal forging. It will increase the risks and the drain on your systems exponentially, but I’d be more worried about what you were exposed to than anything else.”  
“I know what could happen.” Better than you know, Skywarp didn’t add. The unchanged weren’t big on doctors, and he’d seen the very worst of forging before he picked his proper name.  
“Good,” Ratchet said, without going into the gory details like he did last night. Starscream had yelled at him, and Megatron had yelled at Starscream, and Prime had said something quiet to Megatron, and Thundercracker had come in and pulled him out. Skywarp was starting to really like Thundercracker. Not that he had ever disliked him, but Thundercracker had been gone away to war for so long, and then he’d needed time to adjust to civilian life, or so Starscream said. Now Thundercracker was leaning against the wall, protecting the door panel from being locked. When he noticed Skywarp was watching him, he smiled reassuringly and tilted his head in Ratchet’s direction.  
“Did you hear a word I said?” the doctor was asking.  
“Risky, bad things can happen, I don’t care.” Skywarp said.  
Ratchet sighed. “You were exposed to zabuyelite at least, and I don’t know what else. That can interfere with ember development.”  
He had Skywarp’s full attention now. “What do you mean?” he asked, fuel lines running cold.  
“It has some known side effects.” Ratchet opened the box he’d made Thundercracker carry in. “It can keep parts from forming properly, causing problems down the line. Missing systems, bad code, that sort of thing.”  
“But he said they were only a deca-cycle old,” Thundercracker spoke up. “How much damage could happen in a deca-cycle? Especially if they’ve all survived.”  
Surviving didn’t mean anything though. Skywarp had seen maridi with all sorts of malfunctions, without mouths, too-heavy limbs that tore right off, fuel lines that twisted around each other and never quite connected. And more that were survivable, optics missing, joints that didn’t bend, invisible lines of code that kept the vrefos from ever talking. Skywarp loved his embers already, and nothing –nothing! could change that.  
That didn’t mean he wished pain on them.  
He wouldn’t be like his genei, wouldn’t refuse to get them whatever assistance they needed, whatever outside intervention he could find. But he didn’t know, and he spared a brief moment to curse them for not teaching him, what help there was, where he could get it. Starscream might, Starscream knew almost everything, but Skywarp should know these things.  
How could he hope to raise one tenkos, much less eight, when he was barely more than half a nipio himself? There were so many things his genei hadn’t taught him, so many things he had to learn before they were born, so he could teach them in turn.  
“Skywarp,” Starscream snapped, like it wasn’t the first time.  
“What?”  
“I was saying, I would be happy to be your doctor, if you want.” Ratchet was holding a scanner in his hands. It didn’t look anything like Ambulon’s. “My specialty was the newly- rogimed, and I’ve had patients with multiple embers before. I won’t say that your vrefi will definitely need extra care, but between the number and the zabuyelite, the odds aren’t good.”  
“Thank you, I’d like that,” Skywarp said, falling into politeness as a cover for how absolutely certain he was that he had no idea what to say. Did everyone forging need a doctor, or just those who might have sick kori? How often would he have to see Ratchet? So many questions, and nobody he could ask for answers. After all, Starscream had no kori.  
“You’re very welcome,” Ratchet said. Starscream was giving him an odd look that Skywarp didn’t understand. “If you lie back and open your chest up, I can show them to you.”  
Skywarp did, and while Ratchet fiddled with the scanner, the doctor talked about energon supplements and the anti-emetic properties of radiation, which was a fancy way of saying it would stay down.  
“Alright, here they are,” Ratchet said, turning the scanner screen towards Skywarp. There was his spark, and faintly, almost hidden by its brightness, Skywarp could see eight tiny sparkles spinning ‘round, so small, so small.

* * *

  
Skywarp looked up from the datapad when the door opened. When he saw who it was, he scrambled to his feet, hopefully all traces of zabu gone from his system. “Lord Megatron, sir,” he said. “I, um.”  
Discomfort flashed across Megatron’s face, covered by the mask of friendliness he sometimes adopted around Skywarp. Skywarp didn’t mind that it was fake. It meant Megatron cared about Skywarp’s comfort more than his own. “Skywarp,” he said gently, sitting in the chair. “I thought we were long past that.”  
Skywarp nodded, and at a gesture from Megatron, sat back down on the berth. Like most fliers, he much preferred sitting where he had plenty of room for his wings. “I’m sorry, but Ratchet said I couldn’t go with you to hunt down Jhiaxus, that it was too dangerous.”  
“Keeping you safe is my priority right now,” Megatron said, leaning forward. “Starscream has arranged for a temporary replacement. Two, actually.”  
“I’m sorry to be a bother.” Skywarp fisted his hands on his knees. Replacements? If anything happened to Megatron, he would find them and dent their faces. He might just do that anyways. With his fists.  
“I wish we had Jhiaxus where I could see him. But I see you have a guard of your own?”  
Skywarp nodded. “Starscream says it’s because he’s the best, not because he’s his sieziegos.”  
“Yes, I have met Thundercracker,” Megatron said. “You are safer with no-one else.”  
Skywarp looked down at his feet, away from Megatron’s gaze. Did he tell Megatron he would be safer with Megatron himself? Or did he agree and not impose on the Lord High Protector? “I’ve met him a few times before. He’s nice. And Starscream likes him.”  
“And he’s certainly protective of you,” Megatron said with a raised brow ridge.  
“I’m sorry!” Skywarp blurted to the wall behind Megatron’s head. “I just, I know now I shouldn’t have, but at the time…”  
“Peace, Skywarp,” Megatron interrupted, putting a hand on Skywarp’s wrist. It was the first time Megatron had touched him. Skywarp had thought he would feel something, besides the same slight anxiety that still plagued him. That Megatron wouldn’t understand. “You needed to decide as soon as possible. Ratchet should be apologizing to you, if anyone owes anyone an apology.”  
“He did,” Skywarp said, voice small. “I talked to him this morning. He didn’t mind, he even said he’d take care of me personally instead of transferring me to a stranger.”  
“That’s good. Ratchet was the best, once upon a time, though his specialty was the newly-sparked.”  
“He told me that, and that he’d brush up before they came. In case something was wrong with them.”  
“So you are going to keep them, then.” Skywarp couldn’t tell what Megatron was thinking. He cared enough to hide it from Skywarp, to let Skywarp make his own choice.  
Skywarp nodded. “I…want them,” was all he could force out of his swiftly-freezing vocalizer. He couldn’t tell Megatron about the eight tiny miracles he’d carried out of that pit. Of the eight before, held so close to his spark they’d died without its radiance. He couldn’t tell Megatron about the strength he drew from their fragile embers. Even if he could find the words, nobody would understand. He wasn’t going to die, no matter what the risks were. They saved him, and he’d need a whole lifetime to repay all eight of them.  
Megatron traced a seam on Skywarp’s wrist with his thumb. “Good,” he said. “I know we never talked about vrefi, but if you don’t want people to know, I would be honored…if you chose to claim me as their code donor.” Most everyone would assume that anyways, since as his pallakos Skywarp had promised to interface with no-one else. But that was all they had promised, faithfulness in the berth and nothing more. In the eyes of the law, these nipii would be Skywarp’s alone, only Skywarp’s responsibility to feed and house, and when the contract ended Megatron would have no more right to them than Skywarp would to Galvatron.  
Skywarp bowed his head, unable to look Megatron in the eye. “Thank you,” he said, the offer more than he dreamed of. He knew Megatron wouldn’t be so cruel as to cast him out, but to save him from a lifetime of tedious explanations? Skywarp didn’t know what he expected, but not this.  
Megatron stood, and drew Skywarp close to his chest. “Anything you need,” he said, stroking the Seeker’s wings. “You didn’t think I’d make you do this alone?”  
“You are so busy, with things so much more important than me,” Skywarp whispered. Just to be here, in Megatron’s arms, made everything suddenly seem possible.  
“I will always make time for you,” Megatron promised. “I will never stop loving you.”  
Skywarp just nodded, unable to muster words for a fear he didn’t know he had. But he should have, he should have known, he’d seen it firsthand. Pallakis had seemed like a good idea when Starscream suggested it, but now, he had no protection, no right…he clutched at Megatron’s armor suddenly, afraid of breaking the tenuous thread between the two of them. He envied Starscream, fiercely, for the promises Thundercracker had made. The promises he would never dare to ask the Lord High Protector to make.  
“Let me cancel my appointments for the day,” Megatron said. “Unless you have something to do?”  
Skywarp shook his head, and Megatron reached up to cradle it still in one deadly-strong hand. Skywarp had loved that, once upon a time, loved to feel Megatron’s strength surrounding him, protective and fierce, but now it just reminded him of other hands holding him down, not nearly so welcome, unable to move even enough to bite.  
But he didn’t dare say anything, for if there was ever a time for Megatron to leave him, now was it.

* * *

  
The Prime’s office was an imposing chamber, with the weight of history and the optics of past rulers of Cybertron observing what their successors did with their legacy. Optimus’, on the other hand, was a cozy cupboard bursting with datapads and battered furniture. Skywarp knocked on the plain, out of the way door twice, wondering where the guard was, and limped in the room when Optimus shouted an invitation.  
“Skywarp!” Surprised, Prime rose from his seat and hurried to assist Skywarp to one of the room’s two chairs. “What are you doing here?”  
“You wanted to see me, sir,” Skywarp reminded him. “If this is a bad time, I can come back later.”  
“No, it’s fine.” Optimus sat back down in his own chair. “I just wasn’t expecting you up and around so quickly.”  
Skywarp shrugged. “Ratchet does good work. What did you want?”  
“We arrested Jhaxius.” Skywarp felt his hands curl into reflexive fists at the mention of his name. “I was hoping you could give me an official statement of what happened to you.”  
“Sure,” Skywarp said.  
Optimus didn’t say anything for a long time. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said, finally.  
“What do you want to know?”  
“Anything you can tell me.”  
“Okay. That’s not much. He got in touch with me because he was doing a thing with people who’d left Sunstorm like I did, and he wanted me to come with him to talk to them. The first night there, he drugged my energon. Ambulon told me that. Do you know what happened to him? He turns into a leg, he’s got flaky paint and scary organization skills.”  
“Yes, we picked him up,” Optimus shook his head. “You’re safe from him too.”  
Skywarp frowned in confusion. “But Ambulon’s cool. Jhiaxus kept me drugged for a couple of paracycles, and locked up in that building where I was.” He shivered. “The window was really unnecessary because I kept walking into it.”  
Optimus made some notes. “You didn’t go to Tesarus?”  
“No, sir. He kindled embers in me. With science.”  
“Did he,” Optimus paused. “Did he force you?”  
“No, sir,” Skywarp said. “He had zabu in me and I couldn’t fight. And sometimes the energon would taste funny and I’d lose a whole day.”  
“I understand,” Optimus said, tapping at his console. “Who donated their code?”  
“I don’t know, sir.” Skywarp tried and failed to not fidget. “I just lost a day and woke up hot and achey, and Ambulon would fill me in.”  
Optimus nodded. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”  
“Ambulon’s a good guy,” Skywarp said. “He wasn’t happy about it but he couldn’t leave any more than I could. Oh, and he said to tell you the variable was the number of mods.”  
“I’ll pass that along.” Optimus sighed quietly, so quietly Skywarp doubted he was supposed to hear it. “If there’s anything you think of later, my door’s always open for you.”  
“Yes, sir,” Skywarp said, standing up.  
“Or if you ever want to talk,” Optimus continued. “About anything.”  
He looked so earnest, so hopeful, that Skywarp could barely stand it. Optimus had always tolerated him before, friendly when they met but never seeking him out. What did this change mean? Did he think Skywarp weak now? Too weak to take care of his embers? “I understand, sir. Is there anything else?”  
Optimus stood up, slowly. “No, Skywarp,” he said, crossing the room and opening the door. “Thank you for helping.”  
“You’re welcome, sir,” Skywarp said, making his escape. Megatron was off doing a troop review, but perhaps Slipstream would be free? He’d go find out, and put the Prime’s strange behavior behind him.  
As he warped closer to Slipstream’s office, he spared a thought and a prayer for Ambulon. A fellow walkaway from Sunstorm, Ambulon was the one bright spot in the hazy cloud of his drugged memories. Skywarp hoped they wouldn’t blame him for what Jhiaxus did. He didn’t know what Ambulon was threatened with to stay, but he was glad the medic had stuck around. He’d been the one tolerable thing in that whole damn nightmare.

* * *

  
Starscream knocked perfunctorily on the door, and keyed it open. Skywarp was draped over the desk chair, waving a gamepad around as if that would help him beat the level. Some of his games worked like that; from the foul language pouring off him, this was not one of them.  
“When was the last time you left this room?” Starscream asked. He remembered the first deca-cycles Skywarp had lived with him, after fleeing his family home, completely unprepared for the real world. Skywarp had sat on the couch and played video games or watched television for hours on end, unwilling to be seen by his genei’s friends on the street alone. And the first paracycles, when Skywarp had called him for permission every time he left the house. It wasn’t his fault. Skywarp knew that his genei hadn’t raised him to function in normal society, but it took him a long time to grasp just how big the differences were between regular Cybertronians and Sunstorm’s followers.  
“Uh, this morning?” Skywarp guessed, turning off the gamepad with more force than strictly necessary. “Slipstream didn’t want to go hold hands at the charity clinic without someone to appreciate her snark. It was the day the addicts come in for new injectors.”  
Starscream blinked in surprise. After paracycles spent drugged, raped and tortured in the clutches of a mad scientist…but no, he wasn’t going to judge Skywarp. Skywarp was an adult, and he knew how to take care of himself. Starscream had seen to that.  
And unlike the other mechs rescued from Jhiaxus, this wasn’t the first time Skywarp had gone through hell, or even the fifth. Which was a depressing thought all on its own, but Starscream wasn’t complaining that his friend seemed to be functioning. Even if he had acquired a new obsession with mori.  
“Well, get up,” Starscream ordered. “You’re coming with me out to lunch.”  
Skywarp got to his feet, fluid and deadly and not at all like an overgrown turbo-moose. More of Starscream’s influence; when Skywarp had left home, he’d been utterly unprepared for anything resembling a job, with no education and less skills. Starscream had pushed him through getting his certificates for private security, eventually. It had taken Skywarp a long time to settle on that. It had taken Skywarp a long time to realize he had a choice to do something beyond caring for nipii or running messages. “Okay,” he said. “What’s the occasion?”  
Starscream shrugged. “Haven’t seen you in a deca-cycle.”  
“And so?” Skywarp asked, following Starscream down the hall.  
“And so I wanted to make sure you were staying out of trouble,” Starscream snapped, but there was no heat to it. The launchpad was clear, and the two Seekers folded themselves into alt-mode.  
“Where do you want to go?” Skywarp asked over the comm.  
“The Rusty Taco.” Starscream banked west, and Skywarp followed. The Rusty Taco was all the way on the other side of the city, but Skywarp flew easily, chatting the whole time about some new game he was playing and all the different aliens to shoot.  
Starscream listened with half an audial, watching Skywarp for any hint of physical weakness, any hint of emotional turmoil. But he couldn’t find anything beyond vague anxiety about finding a replacement before the mori were born, and wanting a third cube. Starscream tried not to be disappointed that Skywarp had bounced back so quickly, but he couldn’t help it. Something had to be wrong, and either Skywarp was lying to him –or Skywarp himself didn’t know.  
But wherever it was lurking, it stayed quiet through lunch, through returning Skywarp back to Megatron. Starscream should have went back to his office, but there was nothing he couldn’t finish at home, and he had a sudden need to see his sieziegos.  
“What’s wrong?” Thundercracker asked when Starscream came home in the middle of the day, and sat on the couch next to him. At first Starscream didn’t say anything, but Thundercracker muted the soap opera and pulled him into an embrace.  
Starscream sighed, and nearly denied that anything was out of reflex, but this was Thundercracker. “Skywarp,” he said, leaning back in blue arms and stretching his legs along the couch. “He’s okay. How, in the name of all that is logical and sane, is he not a gibbering wreck?”  
Thundercracker was quiet for a long minute, hands moving over Starscream’s arms in long, slow strokes. He rested his chin on Starscream’s shoulder. “The umizoomis never quite figured out we weren’t organic,” he began. “First they thought we had pilots, then they thought we were all drones, remote controlled, maybe.”  
Starscream waited. Thundercracker usually had a point to his stories, even if he did have an endearingly annoying habit of starting at the beginning. He settled in against Thundercracker’s chest, letting Thundercracker hold him safe and protected. Such things were important to his sieziegos, even in their house, miles from any enemies.  
“So when a mech was captured, he wasn’t treated as a prisoner of war, but as enemy tech,” Thundercracker continued. “And we always rescued them, or tried to, but it wasn’t exactly easy. Some soldiers we took paracycles to reach. I’m sure you can imagine what it was like for them. Less specific than what happened to Skywarp, but in a lot of ways, it was the same.” He sighed. “And some of them, when they came back, wanted to be okay so badly. To have it not have happened. And some of them were in denial –they were free and healthy and alive, and that meant they must be all right.”  
“But they weren’t,” Starscream murmured.  
“No, they weren’t. They were hurt somewhere deep inside, hiding it even from themselves. And the thing about hidden wounds is, well.” Thundercracker paused, and when he continued Starscream could hear the rueful grin in his voice. “That metaphor got away from me. There’s not really a good one, I think. There’s nothing quite like being held prisoner and violated in ways we haven’t even names for.” He sighed. “And even if he agreed to get help, if it’s too soon, then he’s supposed to be fixed and he won’t be.”  
Starscream waited, with a patience reserved for Thundercracker alone. Thundercracker never spoke of the Umizoomi clusterfrag. “Skywarp’s not planning to kill himself, so we just have to wait for him to realize he’s not okay.”  
“So we’re supposed to just play along with his delusion?”  
“Yes,” Thundercracker drew Starscream a little closer. “And not make him afraid we’ll get frustrated and give up. Just wait for him to ask, and not tell him he’s doing it wrong. And help him when he asks for it.”  
“That is the stupidest plan I have ever heard of, and I’ve seen Shockwave’s budget proposal,” Starscream said. “Maybe for soldiers, but this is Skywarp. He’s an idiot.”  
“Then maybe he’s too stupid to understand,” Thundercracker said softly. “But I don’t think he is. I think he’s afraid of you and doesn’t trust me. That’s okay, I wouldn’t expect him to.”  
“And why would he be afraid of me?” Starscream demanded.  
“Well, afraid of disappointing you,” Thundercracker corrected himself. “He’s a good kid, but if you drag him down to therapy he’ll go, I’d put money on it, and he’d try, but these things can’t be forced. Not even by him. I’ve seen this before. Do you trust me?”  
“Of course!” And just like that, Starscream’s irritation dissolved. Of course he trusted Thundercracker. It wasn’t his fault Skywarp wasn’t acting as Starscream expected –and for Skywarp, from Thundercracker, Starscream would take the correction.  
“Then we give him time, and we let him know when he’s ready that we’re here for him, and there’s no time limit.” Starscream couldn’t stop his smirk; Skywarp had cast his spell on his sieziegos. Well, good. Skywarp needed more friends, would need more in the days to come. “Right now, they said, the most important thing was letting him have control. And unless he’s going to hurt himself…”  
“Like with his insane plan to carry eight embers at once?”  
Thundercracker didn’t have an answer for that. “It’s not going to be easy to do. But people try to help, and you’ve said he’ll try to please his friends.”  
“Skywarp doesn’t have any friends,” Starscream said with a snort. “There is Megatron, and there are people who tolerate him for Megatron, and there are people who use him to get to Megatron.”  
“And you,” Thundercracker said.  
Starscream snorted again. “He is not my friend. He is my obnoxious younger adelfos that magically appeared on my roof one day and hasn’t left me alone since.” And crushed the minion Starscream had been building. “Friends like he’s going to need, he hasn’t had nearly enough time to make. You can blame that on his genei.”  
Thundercracker nodded, and kissed the back of Starscream’s head. “I’ll just have to work fast then. We need to look out for him, and wait, until he can tell us what he needs. And protect him from well-meaning idiots who might accidentally hurt him.”  
“Does that include himself?”  
Thundercracker dropped another kiss on Starscream's head. “Yes.”

* * *

  
“Megatron?” Optimus Prime said. “What do you think?”  
“I think we should break for some energon,” Megatron said, tearing his gaze from Skywarp. Optimus wouldn’t notice, no-one else would notice, but Skywarp was chewing on his top lip, like he always did when he was hungry. “Skywarp, will you join us?”  
“Sure,” Skywarp said, ambling over. He was almost completely recovered from his ordeal, and Megatron didn’t know what was worse. That he had learned to recover so quickly, or that it had happened in the first place.  
That the worst part was how Megatron had sent him into Jhiaxus’ tender mercies went without saying.  
But now, to look at him, no-one would guess that anything had ever been wrong, that now he was carrying an unprecedented eight embers. Megatron keyed in down to the cafeteria with their order, plain energon for himself, half-percent for Optimus, and Skywarp’s special blend of irradiated gravidium boosters.  
“Sit down,” Optimus said, sliding a chair towards Skywarp with his foot. Skywarp nodded his thanks and perched on the edge, unable to sit back fully because of his wings. He had to spread his feet and lean forward for balance, and Megatron was hit by a sudden memory of Skywarp in a chair very much like that one, hands curled around the armrests and feet behind Megatron’s head, as Megatron explored the rarely-touched inside of his thighs. Skywarp had ripped one of the armrests right off. Megatron hadn’t minded, not when Skywarp apologized so prettily.  
Was Skywarp up for such things? Megatron would have to check the central cortex and find out. He couldn’t just ask him. Skywarp was a silly little hedonist who’d say yes, for Megatron’s sake if for nothing else.  
“How are you feeling, Skywarp?” Optimus asked. His thoughts often followed, if not the same flight path as Megatron’s, at least the heading.  
Skywarp shrugged, one hand creeping over his chest, where his foundry lay under his plating. “Okay, for the most part. A little sick sometimes.”  
Megatron quirked a brow at him. “A little?”  
“It’s not so bad I can’t do my job,” Skywarp defended himself hotly.  
“They say the sicker you feel, the healthier your ember,” Optimus said. “If you feel you need to, we will of course allow you to rest and save your strength for them.”  
“I don’t know where I’d find someone half as good as you,” Megatron said, giving Optimus a speaking look. Skywarp took it badly, when someone implied he was Megatron’s bodyguard because he was his pallakos, and not because he was one of the strongest warriors Megatron had ever met.  
“No,” Optimus agreed, spreading his hands, “that would be difficult. Your health comes first, always, and it is your choice, always.”  
Optimus was a real idiot sometimes, and Megatron fought to not roll his eyes. If it was left up to Skywarp, the Seeker wouldn’t leave his post until he was unconscious or dead. Megatron appreciated the loyalty, but at the same time, he didn’t want Skywarp to burn himself out. “If they are right,” he said, half a growl, “then these are the healthiest embers to ever be kindled.”  
Skywarp smiled, wryly. “Yeah, they’re picky about their fuel.”  
“What are you going to do once they come?” Optimus asked, leaning forwards. “You are taking a little time off, yes?”  
“Yes,” Skywarp said, “until they’re old enough for the crèche. We’re turning one of the rooms in our suite into a nursery.”  
“Probably the study,” Megatron said. The door opened, and a remote drone rolled in with their energon. It beeped a warning and came to a stop in front of Optimus.  
“Thank you, friend,” Optimus said gravely. He passed out the cubes, and sent the drone back downstairs.  
Skywarp sipped his energon. “I’ll probably have to take off a little before they’re independent,” he said. “But I have plenty of time to find a replacement.”  
“You speak as if that is an easy task.” Megatron watched Skywarp closely, but the energon didn’t seem to disagree with him.  
“What about Thundercracker?”  
Megatron didn’t need a bodyguard, except for ceremony, and while Thundercracker was certainly the most qualified he would much rather shoot the gold-digging social climber than let him watch his back. But for the sake of his Minister of War, and his pallakos, who was the next thing to Starscream’s adelfos, he held his tongue. He could be diplomatic when the situation called for it.  
“Thundercracker is too good at being flexible,” Skywarp said. “So he’s going to keep doing the floating thing, covering where we need him.”  
Optimus picked up the hint easily and changed the subject. Skywarp may not have wanted to discuss his plans for the future, but he was more than willing to talk about his embers.


	3. γʹ

Thundercracker traded shifts with Breakdown, and managed to beat Starscream home by a matter of minutes. Just enough time to warm up the energon, arrange the goodies on a plate, and stow the supplies under the table in the living room. He was just wiping off a scuff mark when he heard the door open and close, and he hurried to lean casually against the doorframe before Starscream came in.  
Starscream looked at him, optics overbright with emotion. “I thought I told you not to take off work,” he said.  
Thundercracker lifted a shoulder, deceptively casual. “Breakdown wanted to pick up some extra shifts.”  
Starscream nodded, and sat down gingerly. “Money or time?”  
Thundercracker fetched the plate and a pair of cubes from the kitchen. “Money,” he said, setting the plate and cubes at Starscream’s elbow. “He and Knockout are saving up for something.”  
Starscream nodded, but didn’t ask anything else. Thundercracker knelt in front of him and looked up. “Have you talked to Skywarp today?”  
Starscream nodded again. “He’s in shock over what nipios supplies cost. They share a lot, you know.” He sighed, and dropped a foot in Thundercracker’s lap.  
Thundercracker shifted to sitting cross-legged and began stroking the foot in his lap. Starscream wasn’t built for standing for long periods; like most Seekers he needed to fly or sit. But he had stood today, for far too long on a hard floor, and now there were microfractures running across his soles at random. A few of them were even large enough to see with the unzoomed optic.  
Once he had assessed the damage, Starscream silent for once above him, Thundercracker reached under the table for the box of supplies. “You prepared,” Starscream said.  
“Of course,” Thundercracker answered.  
“It doesn’t even matter!” Starscream burst out. “It’s not like they’ll know I was there or not! I can do nothing, it changes nothing. It’s just a complete waste of time. They’re beyond help.”  
Thundercracker poured a little of the nanite-rich lotion into his palm. Starscream’s genei were lying in a ward somewhere, victims of a bad batch of circuit boosters or too many circuit boosters or both –Starscream’s story changed often. He’d never seen them, and Starscream only did rarely.  
It was worse than Thundercracker’s own genei, long and definitively dead. One from splitting his spark too many times, one meta-cycles later in an accident of re-entry. Thundercracker had mourned, and moved on, the edges of the pain worn smooth and small. Not like Starscream, who was stabbed anew each time Slipstream dragged him with her to visit their comatose genei.  
“Nobody cares,” Starscream finished.  
“Slipstream does,” Thundercracker said softly, focusing on the sparangos and the lotion and the visibly large crack. Slipstream had invited Starscream out that day, to keep her company as much as anything.  
“Slipstream is an idiot. I don’t care if she cares.”  
That was a lie, but Thundercracker didn’t call him on it. He just listened quietly as Starscream railed against his nosokos, his absent adelfos, his genei, the doctors that kept them alive, and the universe in general. And while Starscream poured out his hurt, where it could roll off of Thundercracker’s back like oil on wax, Thundercracker bent over his damaged feet and soothed them best he could.  
Starscream rarely visited his genei, but there were plenty of other times he stood on his feet too long while the cares of the world piled up on him. Thundercracker had plenty of practice at listening while he filled the cracks and polished the scuffs and kissed the toes, and stretched it out until Starscream had safely vented all he had bottled up.  
“You should refuel,” he said when they both were done.  
“If you think I’m hungry…” Starscream began.  
“Maybe not,” Thundercracker admitted, sliding his hands up Starscream’s legs. “But since neither of us are working this afternoon, I had a few ideas…all of which need you to be well-energized.”  
And now that he had vented, now that the shock had worn off, Starscream wanted nothing more than to forget his genei weren’t long in the Well. He picked up the energon with one hand and reached for Thundercracker with the other. “I have a few ideas of my own, now that you mention it.”  
In the end, they spilled more energon than they drank, but Starscream ate all the goodies and smiled, so Thundercracker counted it a victory.

* * *

  
Even after Ratchet turned off the monitor, Skywarp could see the faint glow of seven tiny sparks, shining through casings of transparent thinness, the white not-color leaking through the still-unfused plates revealing their age. So young, and already he lost one.  
Lost somewhere, in his body, flushed out of the safety of his foundry to be …absorbed. Repurposed. Gone, as if he –it- had never existed in the first place. As if Skywarp hadn’t talked to him, dreamed of him, imagined the color of his wing-stripe and his top airspeed and the tiny electric twinge of his spark drawing power from Skywarp’s.  
Skywarp hadn’t noticed one of the currents fading. He didn’t feel any different from yesterday, or the day before, or any day since the last time the Prime’s medic had counted. His spark still felt the same drain, his foundry still at its second collapse. The only difference was Ratchet’s words, and the high feedback whine in his audios.  
Starscream was talking to him, and Skywarp shook his head. No, he didn’t understand the words coming out of his friend’s mouth. They were in a foreign language, one spoken by medics and scientists and they couldn’t penetrate the sensor blocking-code that was creeping back in around the edges. It picked up momentum when Starscream put a hand on his knee, racing through his lines and cutting him off from his traitorous body.  
Ratchet was leaving, and Skywarp knew he should say something, but nobody would hit him if he didn’t and really, not even the closet could have motivated him to activate his vocalizer, much less form coherent words.  
Starscream said something to Ratchet, Starscream took care of everything Skywarp couldn’t, always had, and for a moment, all Skywarp could feel was strut-deep thankfulness. Starscream followed Ratchet to the door, and Skywarp wanted something, but couldn’t find the words, didn’t know if he wanted Starscream to stay or leave him alone to find his grief.  
But Starscream spoke to someone standing outside the door, probably Thundercracker. Thundercracker trailed along behind Starscream like blue contrail these days, not quite taking Skywarp’s place but flowing around the edges, filling in everywhere Skywarp couldn’t. Skywarp wondered what they were saying. He hoped Starscream was telling Thundercracker, was saving Skywarp the trouble of telling people himself.  
How did you do that, anyways? How did you tell people your spark had flickered and died, that you lost the precious ember you’d insisted on keeping?  
It was probably for the best, one less drain on his system, one less spark casing to build and protoform to coalesce, one less avegos to hold and vrefos to feed, one less teknos to teach to fly and read and be careful around stairs.  
Starscream was standing in front of him, and for a nanoclick of terror, Skywarp though he was going to touch him. But no, Starscream said, in that quiet rasp the closest he could get to kindness, “Do you need anything?”  
Skywarp shook his head. He couldn’t stand to hear Starscream repeat what Ratchet said. “You have stuff,” he heard someone say. Heard himself say. “I’ll be all right.”  
Starscream’s face closed off, as neatly as a shuttered window, and Skywarp couldn’t find a spare thought to figure out what he’d done wrong. Starscream would forgive him later. “If you think of anything,” he said. “Comm. me.” And then he fled, and Skywarp was alone.  
“Sorry,” he said to the embers, one hand covering them like that made a damn bit of difference. He lay back on the bed, curling around them and trying to concentrate on the feeling of them. But they were so small still, smaller than they should be from all the sharing, and now that the burn from their kindling was gone he only had Ratchet’s machines to tell they were still there. He could lose another one and not know it. He could have lost another one in the time it took Ratchet to pack up his equipment.  
“You all still there?” he asked, and he could imagine seven tiny spiky heads bobbing, black and silver. He didn’t know where Jhiaxus had gotten the other half of the code from, to attempt to reproduce his teleportation mutation. Perhaps from Ambulon, who’d been kind in his ankle manacles and flaking paint. Then they’d be black and silver, purple and white. He had thought, idly, to have two of each.  
Would he have any?  
“Sorry,” he said again. The grief covered him in a cooling sparganos, heavily seeping into his joints, his servos. He was frozen, and he could not say how long it was before the door cracked open.  
“Mind if I come in?” Thundercracker asked.  
Skywarp had enough energy to push himself up or tell Thundercracker to go away, not both, and Thundercracker had a cube of energon in his hands, tinged silver-blue with gravidium boosters, pale with anti-emetic radiation. Skywarp was learning, best his poor slow processor could, all these long Starscream words.  
“Yes, uh, no,” Skywarp said, swinging his feet over the edge and trying to compose himself. It was easier, with the weight of Thundercracker’s gaze to rest against, and it didn’t really matter, since Thundercracker was always surfing along Starscream’s wake these days, he’d seen it all before. But it was hard to drink when he was a puddle of failed grief, so he balanced the broken pieces of himself against each other and thanked Thundercracker for the cube.  
Thundercracker ambled about the room a little; Skywarp didn’t know if he’d ever been inside before. But he’d stood guard outside the door so long, he deserved a little curiosity. It wasn’t as if Skywarp had anything worth hiding, either. He sipped the energon, feeling it curdle before it even hit his tanks, but his embers needed it, and it was too heavy to bring back up anyways.  
“I’m sorry,” Thundercracker said, not breaking the silence so much as picking it up entirely and setting it aside.  
“You didn’t do it.” Skywarp shrugged. ‘I don’t know what did but you didn’t…it’s my fault.”  
“His code might have been too corrupted or his spark not strong enough, or this just happens sometimes,” Thundercracker said, looking at the ceiling. “It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. One out of six, I’ve heard, only nobody talks about it because it rusts.”  
“They can just randomly extinguish,” Skywarp said to his feet. “I know. I’ve seen it before.”  
Thundercracker shrugged. Skywarp thought he might say it was for the best, and if he did, Skywarp was going to pound his face concave. “If it happens, it happens, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. It just…rusts.”  
“That’s fragging stupid,” Skywarp wanted to throw his cube, break something, and he punched the berth. “What’s the point of kindling if he’s just going to disappear?”  
“It doesn’t work like that.” Thundercracker shook his head. “His adelfi will take pieces of him, parts of his spark. And they’ll be the stronger for it, and he’ll still be a part of them. And a part of you, forever.”  
Skywarp turned dull optics to Thundercracker. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”  
“No,” Thundercracker said, sitting next to him. “I don’t think there’s any words that could make you feel better right now.” But he stayed, where Starscream fled, where Megatron wouldn’t even come.

* * *

  
The observation deck above the training ring was crowded as usual, but the mechs made room for Thundercracker and Skywarp. Not the sieziegos of Starscream and the pallakos of Megatron, but the only mechs deemed good enough to guard the Lord High Protector since the Umi War. Even the few mechs that didn’t like them made room out of respect.  
Thundercracker was still hovering around Skywarp while Megatron was occupied, since Jhiaxus was still on the loose. It felt less like being guarded and more like the days when Skywarp had teleported to Starscream’s house first thing in the morning and stayed for as long as he could get away with.  
“Breakdown’s been training hard lately,” Skywarp said. “Is he picking up metalliko?”  
“Looking to earn a raise,” Thundercracker said, folding his arms on the railing. “A little technobird told me he and Knockout are adopting.”  
“It costs money?” Skywarp tilted his head at his companion.  
Thundercracker didn’t answer for a few seconds. Skywarp kicked the floor. It had been a long time since he’d said something that stupid –but his family had regarded adoption as worse than infanticide. “No,” Thundercracker said finally, as if it was perfectly normal for Skywarp to not know anything about adoption. “But at first one of them will have to stay home with the bitlet, and if Breakdown gets a raise they can both cut back to half-time and take turns staying home. Otherwise, Knockout will have to work every day, and then he’ll miss out.”  
“Oh,” Skywarp said.  
“I went drinking with Breakdown,” Thundercracker added. “You should come with us some time.”  
“How does it work?” Skywarp asked, quietly though nobody was paying attention to them. He watched Breakdown flip a mech over his shoulder. “Not that I’m interested. I am, but I’m not…”  
“I know what you mean,” Thundercracker said. “One of the mechs that was rescued from Jhiaxus doesn’t want to keep the mori. He talked to a social worker, and the social worker has a list of pre-approved adoptive genei. Knockout and Breakdown were okay with taking one, even though the zabuyelite means there’s a good chance the moros will need extra care. He was much further along than you.”  
Thundercracker wasn’t judging, of course not. Starscream wouldn’t have sworn to him if he wasn’t cool. On the ground, Breakdown’s opponent tapped out, banging his hand against the floor. Breakdown helped him up, all kindness, and helped him to the bench at the edge of the ring.  
“I don’t remember my pedios,” Thundercracker continued. “He hated sitting inside with a moros all day, just couldn’t handle it. My enkyos asked him if he needed help, asked him if they should switch, asked him if I should go to crèche. And my pedios always said no, everything was fine, and if I cried he’d shake me until I stopped. My enkyos took me and left, as soon as he found out. I don’t know why my pedios kept trying if he hated it so much but,” Thundercracker flicked his wings. “No good comes from making someone raise kids he doesn’t want.”  
“The unchanged, they hate the idea of adoption,” Skywarp said. “Because mori have to come from someone, and the idea of taking one, well, they don’t like to think that a mech might not want kids.”  
Thundercracker turned around, leaned back against the railing. “My pedios maybe wanted one, before he knew what it was like,” he said. “My enkyos wouldn’t have left, except he refused help. There’s no shame in asking for help, you know?”  
Skywarp repressed a growl. “Why does everyone think I don’t know what I’m getting into? I have five little adelfi, seventeen younger relatives, and I missed your wedding because I was taking care of three nipii while my nosokos had her first!” His engine revved, out of his control, and several people looked their way.  
Thundercracker offered the staring mechs a smile. They turned away, though Skywarp was sure they were still listening. He didn’t particularly care. “I didn’t know that,” Thundercracker said. “You have to know more than I do, then. The last moros I held was Hot Rod, and I couldn’t even tell you before that.”  
“You sure know a lot about forging, for a guy who knows nothing about mori,” Skywarp said, not doubting or accusing, just observing.  
“Not here.” Thundercracker said, with a significant glance at a horned grounder.  
Skywarp held out his hand, Thundercracker took it, and Skywarp teleported them easily to Starscream’s empty office. The room spun around him, and he had to grab the ornately carved desk to keep from falling over. Thundercracker grasped his elbow and led him to Starscream’s fancy chair, and found a cube in the bottom draw, glowing with anti-emetic radiation.  
“Really,” Skywarp said.  
“For when the turbofox bites,” Thundercracker said with a grin.  
Skywarp nodded, and drank Starscream’s remedy for a night of hard drinking. It stayed down and steadied him, and Thundercracker drew the other chair around the desk. “You know a lot about forging,” Skywarp repeated.  
Thundercracker shrugged and spread his hands. “I was an only tenkos,” he said. “My genei wanted more. Not my enkyos and my pedios, my enkyos and my trefos. They kept trying, but.”  
“But what?”  
“My trefos was an outlier. That’s how my enkyos met him; he was teaching me how to not break every window in a hundred feet when I was angry. And my enkyos was an outlier, he could see half a second into the future, or maybe he just thought half a second faster than everyone else. Either way, good for flying, not for much else.”  
“What does that have to do with anything?” Skywarp asked. He hadn’t known Thundercracker was an outlier, too. Starscream might have mentioned it; Skywarp tended to tune him out when he started waxing poetic about Thundercracker, and how he was a far better mech than Skywarp.  
Skywarp didn’t take it personally. You couldn’t pay too much attention to what Starscream said. Especially when it came to insulting Skywarp –pretending to hate him in public was a habit not even five meta-cycles of freedom could break.  
“Outliers have a hard time carrying to term,” Thundercracker said, leaning forward. “Didn’t you know that?”  
The teleporter shook his head. “Unchanged, remember?”  
“What does that have to do with anything?”  
“They don’t like outliers,” Skywarp said. “What happened to your trefos?”  
Thundercracker took the hint. “Thirteen lost sparks and six avegi that never rogimed,” he said. “The last one took too much of his spark and he died.”  
“I’m sorry,” Skywarp said, because that was what you said. He felt kind of stupid, because he didn’t feel the least bit sorry. Bad, yes, but he didn’t have anything to do with it.  
“It was a long time ago,” Thundercracker said, looking away.

* * *

  
“Okay,” Ratchet said, flipping off the monitor. “Everything about them looks good. Let’s check you out.”  
Skywarp closed his chest and sat up, watching as Ratchet took out a scanner. He offered the medical port on his wrist for the leads. “They’re all still there?”  
“Yes,” Ratchet said. “Your filters are clogged. How often have you been changing them?”  
“Every five or six days,” Skywarp said. “Don’t want to waste them.” The filtered energon drained into a tank, ready and waiting for the growing embers. And once they were rogimed, that same tank would still feed them until they had grown enough to accommodate filters of their own.  
“Do it more,” Ratchet ordered. “They’re easier to replace than your fuel lines if one plugs up and then the feeder line splits. You’re losing protoform at a slower rate, and are you adding the supplements?”  
“Yeah.” Skywarp nodded. “After what happened last time, don’t want to do that again.”  
Ratchet paused. “Last time?”  
“The first time Jhiaxus implanted me,” Skywarp said. “It itched horribly when they started sucking stuff out of my systems, and then the whole back of my hand fell off ‘cause there wasn’t enough protoform under it to stick anymore. Ambulon put it back on. What happened to him, anyways?”  
“It didn’t occur to you to mention this before?”  
“Does it matter?” Ambulon had been kind, much the same way Starscream was, and he said more in the silences than with his sharp tongue. He’d been recruited much the same way Skywarp had been, with a lie about outliers who needed help escaping from the unchanged. Unlike Skywarp, Ambulon had worked as a nurse; he had walked away meta-cycles before Skywarp had, and was fully upgraded. Skywarp wasn’t sure why that had been important, but Ambulon had repeated it over and over, that Skywarp needed to tell them Jhiaxus’ variable was number of modifications. Skywarp wasn’t really sure what that meant. He wasn’t even sure how many modifications he had himself.  
“Did you hear a word I said?” Ratchet asked, interrupting his thoughts.  
“Um.”  
Ratchet sighed and began packing up his tools. “Drink more. Replace your filters more often. Don’t die. Any questions?”  
“Can you find out what happened to Ambulon? He shouldn’t be in jail, he just hung around because he was afraid his replacement would be a slag-eater. Don’t punish him, he was the nicest guy in the place. I think you’d like him.”  
“I’ll ask around,” Ratchet said, then hesitated and added, “Talk to someone about Jhiaxus.”  
And why would Skywarp want to do that?


	4. δʹ

“What’s taking so long?” Skywarp asked, drumming his heels against the berth like the giant overgrown nipios he was.  
“He’s lurking outside the door.” Starscream didn’t look up from his datapad. “Every time he hears you say he’s taking too long, Ratchet makes you wait another five minutes.”  
“Well, that’s stupid. He’s always complaining about how busy he is. Why would he waste time like that?”  
Starscream sighed, and bit off a curse as he lost the level. He was never going to beat Thundercracker’s score on this stupid luck game. “Just stop whining for two kliks. Please. I will pay you.”  
“I’m not whining,” Skywarp whined.  
Starscream thought about strangling him –not all the way to death, just unconscious, but Ratchet chose that minute to make his appearance. He apologized for the wait, but Starscream brushed him off and Skywarp thanked him for doing this in the first place. The doctor washed his hands and told Skywarp to lay back, ran a scanner over him and prodded him a few times.  
“Everything looks about what I expected so far,” Ratchet said. “You’re losing too much protoform, your filters are clogged up again, and you’re not taking in nearly enough energon.”  
“He drinks it,” Starscream put in, poking at his screen with his stylus. Thundercracker had a not-so-surprising knowledge about forging newsparks; perhaps he would have another brilliant idea.  
“The embers are starting to take what they need from your structure,” Ratchet said. “Which is a problem in and of itself, but you still haven’t recovered from the last ones. You barely have enough for yourself. You need to drink more, with the supplemental packets. How much are you drinking?”  
“It’s not the drinking that’s the problem for him,” Starscream said, in his best imitation of Thundercracker’s driest tone. “It’s the keeping it down.”  
Ratchet fixed him with a gimlet stare. “He can talk for himself, you know.” When he turned back to his patient, his voice was gentler. A little. “How much are you vomiting?”  
Skywarp shrugged. “A lot?”  
“He still gets tired easily,” Starscream added. “More than should be normal.”  
“With so many, I’m not surprised,” Ratchet snorted and reached for the larger scanner. “Hold still, and let me take a look at them.”  
Skywarp obediently tilted himself towards Ratchet and moved his hands out of the way. Ratchet tapped his chest with the wand, and Skywarp retracted his chestplates a little, enough for the probe to rest in his foundry, next to his spark chamber. “Stretched so thin,” Ratchet murmured, apparently to himself. Starscream’s hand tightened around the stylus, hard enough for it to creak.  
“Well, they’re all still in there,” Ratchet said, looking at the monitor. “They’re on the small size, but they’re hanging on, and they’ve all taken a color. I see one plain silver, one silver and red, two blues, two golds, and one purple.” He withdrew the wand and tapped on Skywarp’s open chest. Nobody said anything as his chestplates closed with a hiss of overtaxed hydraulics and he pulled himself up with a grunt.  
But without assistance.  
“I think you should plan on all of them detaching,” Ratchet said, giving voice to what Starscream dared not hope. “Which means we need to talk.”  
“About what?” Starscream asked, lowering his datapad.  
“We being him and I,” Ratchet snapped. “You are not part of this conversation. Why are you even here?”  
In lieu of an answer, Starscream nodded in Skywarp’s direction. The black Seeker was sitting with a hand over his chest, eyes hazy and unfocused, attention turned totally inwards. He didn’t take notice of Starscream’s shortwave hail or calling his name, or Ratchet reaching for him. “Do you have time for him to rejoin the rest of Cybertron?”  
Ratchet harrumphed. “That doesn’t mean you get a say in his decisions.”  
“No,” Starscream agreed. “But I do have the time to break the information down into monosyllables for him.”  
Ratchet harrumphed again, louder, and the sound caught Skywarp’s attention. “If he’s purple like me does that mean he can teleport too?”  
“No,” Ratchet said. “All it means is one of his spori –probably you- has a purple spark.” He gave Skywarp a minute to absorb that and said, “Now, it’s dangerous to detach them all at once, so what I’d like to do is plan to remove them manually, one at a time. When they’re much bigger. That’s the safest for you.”  
“Okay, sure, whatever you think is best,” Skywarp said.  
“But the safest for them is to stay attached for as long as possible. You’re not even listening.”  
“I am,” Starscream said.  
Ratchet folded his arms. “Again with you not being part of this conversation.”  
“And he’s such an active participant,” Starscream shot back. “We carried him out of hell on our backs. I’m not about to let him throw all that away.”  
“Exactly my point,” Ratchet said.  
Starscream smiled maliciously. Bluffing Ratchet would be hard, but he was the master. “And if his precious nipii died, the only thing that kept him going through all that torture and pain, what do you think he’d do?” It wouldn’t have worked on Megatron, or Thundercracker, or even Prime.  
But it worked on Ratchet. “I’ll send the information on to him,” he said begrudgingly. “He doesn’t have to make a decision for another paracycle at least.”  
Skywarp remained oblivious, building aeries in the clouds for nipii he dared hope would live.

* * *

  
Thundercracker wasn’t nearly as surprised as Starscream when Skywarp mentioned that he wanted to go back to the Rusty Taco. Sure, Skywarp had never voiced an opinion on anything before, and Thundercracker had heard in great detail how Skywarp was incapable of choosing a movie if other people were going to watch it as well, and Thundercracker fully expected the sun to come up before Skywarp would suggest a restaurant…but Starscream had been the one to curse at Skywarp, back him in corners and trap him like a glitchmouse, refuse to eat until Skywarp made a decision. Starscream had been the one to teach him the hard way that he had options, that he was allowed to make his own choices, and not every decision was a trick question, that no-one would beat him for picking the wrong one. Starscream had been very specific on why Thundercracker needed to be patient with him, needed to be careful to not even accidentally judge so much as his choice of sidearm at the firing range. And when Starscream was done, Thundercracker had entertained several brief but elaborate homicidal fantasies, then went to the Rusty Taco for several very sparkly drinks until he trusted himself to be too overcharged to hit anything he aimed at. Just in case he found himself pointing a gun at Skywarp’s genei. They weren’t worth the murder arrest, nor the charge to send them to the Pit, but he’d found himself in stranger situations.  
Thundercracker had never known there was something worse than shaking a vrefos until he stopped crying.  
So they were going to the Rusty Taco, which was just about Thundercracker’s favorite restaurant, and he could grab a cube with them before he went back to the chaos. Perhaps Skywarp could come back as well; even carrying and slow, Thundercracker would bet on him against any three mechs or five Rock Lords.  
Though Megatron would probably have a thing or two to say about putting Skywarp in danger for no reason. Well, let him. Megatron was frequently wrong where Skywarp was concerned, in Thundercracker’s opinion, but as long as Skywarp was happy Thundercracker wasn’t going to say anything. If anyone deserved pallakosy coddling, it was Skywarp, especially since Megatron didn’t spend nearly enough time with him. Starscream and Thundercracker both spent more time with Skywarp.  
Starscream even went with Skywarp to see Ratchet now. Thundercracker had seen firsthand how bewildered Skywarp was by the whole concept of medical treatment, how he tried to give correct answers instead of honest ones. Half the time he didn’t even know how to answer the question. The only improvement from the last time he needed a doctor, according to Starscream, was that now he understood he could refuse to have things done to him. Even then, Skywarp simply didn’t have the vocabulary or the basic understanding of anatomy to truly make a decision; Starscream had to drag him back to the ER once because Skywarp had punctured his synovial reservoir and didn’t understand why it was so important to patch. Someone else might think that the people who claimed to love him were patronizing and insulting Skywarp. Thundercracker knew better. They were just trying to catch Skywarp up with the rest of the adult world, teach him the things his genei never did. Most things Skywarp grasped right away, but the sheer depth of his ignorance threatened to lock up a mech’s processor. Thundercracker had never before realized how many things he had been taught that he always thought everyone just knew. And Starscream had been doing this for meta-cycles. Thundercracker no longer wondered why so few mechs left the unchanged. It was next to impossible for walkaways to survive.  
But Skywarp was pretty much a functional member of society these days, if a little strange and unable to go to the doctor alone. Few people would ever guess he’d had such a terrible upbringing if they saw him sitting in the Rusty Taco, across the table from Starscream, waving at Thundercracker through the window.  
Thundercracker landed and waved back, went inside and found them, sat next to Starscream on the outside of the booth with his back against the wall and a direct line of sight to both doors. Starscream had ordered him a moonracer, and the mica sparkled in the glow of Skywarp’s cube. “So are you going to die anytime soon?” he asked Skywarp, grinning.  
“Nope,” Skywarp said. “Unless Starscream strangles me.”  
Thundercracker looked at his sieziegos, looked at his friend. “You don’t have adelfi,” Starscream said, sipping his cube. “You wouldn’t understand.”  
“I suppose not. Did you hear what Megatron did?”  
“I have heard what they say he did,” Starscream said. “But since it’s patently ridiculous, I am waiting for someone to report on what truly happened.”  
“No, he really did kill the junior ambassador with his empty hands.” Thundercracker sighed.  
“Is he okay?” Skywarp’s face creased into a frown.  
“Oh, he’s fine,” Thundercracker assured him. “He thought the Rock Lord was threatening the Prime when he was simply offering him a priapos. It did look like a weapon. There was a blinking light on the end.”  
“Oh, well if there was a blinking light,” Starscream said from behind his hand.  
“If he hadn’t acted, someone else would have,” Thundercracker said. It wouldn’t have been him. Thundercracker knew a toy when he saw one. But he shouldn’t blame a mech for being cautious, not when he considered the things Starscream had told him he technically wasn’t supposed to know, about rumored Rock Lord plans to avoid a war by plunging Cybertron into leaderless anarchy.  
“But he’s okay?” Skywarp asked again.  
“Yes, everyone’s fine,” Thundercracker said. “Except the dead guy.”  
“This is going to make so much work for me,” Starscream said into his cube. “And it couldn’t have worse possible timing. Does Megatron ever think of anyone besides himself?”  
“What do you need to do?” Thundercracker asked.  
“That one,” Starscream said, pointing at Skywarp who was innocently sipping his cube through a straw, “has decided he’s not going to take care of himself.”  
“Hey, I’m not doing it on purpose!” Skywarp protested.  
“You’re not doing what Ratchet told you, so yes you are.”  
“He told me to drink more and change the filters more often and not die,” Skywarp said. “I am doing all three of those things. It’s not my fault it keeps coming back up.”  
“Then you need to drink even more. Why is that so difficult for you to grasp?”  
Skywarp shoved his cube across the table. “Have you ever tasted this dreck?”  
“What does that have to do with anything!” Starscream yelled. A few heads swiveled, and Thundercracker glared them into turning back around. “On top of him choosing to be an idiot,” Starscream continued, “Ratchet refuses to explain things monosyllabically enough for this one to grasp.”  
Thundercracker nodded, hearing the concern –and the frustration- behind Starscream’s words. It may have been the last remnant of Skywarp’s upbringing, but his inability to even understand what Ratchet was saying, much less answer him honestly was a huge problem. Thundercracker had been there after Skywarp lost one of his embers, when Ratchet came back to check on him. It wasn’t that Skywarp meant to lie, he just didn’t want to be a bother, or disagree with Ratchet. And he’d been too overwhelmed to understand anything anyone had said to him. That time it hadn’t really mattered.  
It might in the future.  
“Well,” Thundercracker stretched, “I could always go with you, if you don’t want to go alone. Most carrying mechs don’t, you know.”  
“Megatron should go with him,” Starscream muttered into his drink. “There’s not going to be a war before they’re born.”  
“I used to go with my trefos,” Thundercracker said, surprised at how little it hurt. “It’s not a big deal, for a friend.”  
Skywarp smiled, and reached across the table, and put his hand on Thundercracker’s wrist. “Thank you.”

* * *

  
“Surely he doesn’t need to be chained?” Optimus murmured. The guard hastened to free Ambulon, then left them without being asked. The sound of the door closing behind him was very loud.  
Ambulon stood where the guard had left him, so confident it puddled around his feet like cleanser. Too much confidence for a mech accused of what Ambulon was accused of, but Optimus admired his strength. “You wanted to talk to me, sir?” the prisoner said after a minute.  
“Yes, please, sit,” Optimus pulled one of the chairs around the table and sat in it, nothing between himself and Ambulon.  
Ambulon sat down carefully in the other chair. Skywarp had spoken of the medic’s kindness. Jhiaxus laid the blame for many things at Ambulon’s feet, for anything he couldn’t claim had been consensual. “Can you tell me about my patients, sir?”  
Optimus hesitated, not sure how much Ambulon was entitled to know. “We rescued eleven mechs,” he said finally. “Flipsides and Overhaul have passed into the Well. Sizzle, Quark, and Nitrostreak are still in stasis. The others have been released from medical care.”  
Ambulon offlined his optics for a klik, then looked at Prime. “Rotorstorm, someone should keep an eye on him. I had him on suicide watch. I don’t know if he still needs it, but better safe than sorry. And Dino doesn’t have anyone to look after him. He’ll need help, his spark was at eighty percent last I checked, right before the raid. They might have let him go but his spark has a chronic instability. It’ll drop down to sixty if he does too much. He’ll say he doesn’t need help, but that’s pride talking.”  
At sixty percent, few mechs were able to even stay conscious. Optimus had a sudden vision of Dino lying on the floor, slowly starving to death as he was caught in a spiral of not enough energy to call for help. He made a note to send someone around to check on the racer.  
“Blackout doesn’t have reliable support, his friends might have abandoned him,” Ambulon continued. “He was afraid he’d be homeless if he ever got out. Pivot was about to start a new cycle, he should be physically okay, though I don’t know anything about his support network. Tracks was asking me about adoption, but he was confident his family would help him.”  
“They all tell us the same thing. That you were kind, and we should show you mercy,” Optimus said. “Skywarp in particular has been passionate in your defense.”  
“Skywarp I am not worried about in the slightest,” Ambulon smiled at a memory. “If any of the doctors want the true medical records, I still have them.” He tapped the side of his head. “I don’t know how much good they will be, after so long, but they might help.”  
“I will pass that along.” Optimus wished he had brought some energon, something to do with his hands. “The bail hearing will be tomorrow, as you no doubt are aware.”  
Ambulon shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me. I can’t afford any bail, and from in here I can’t do anything.”  
“Perhaps we could come to an arrangement,” Prime said. The prosecutor, Ultra Magnus, couldn’t make a deal with Ambulon under Cybertronian law, since Ambulon was indicted as a co-conspirator, but there was always a loophole. Optimus could pay Ambulon’s bail, for the sake of Skywarp and the others, and if Ambulon happened to tell Optimus something that would help Streetwise, the chief investigator of the case, and Magnus pin the blame where it belonged, that was why anonymous tips had been invented. “I am sure I can afford your bail, and I hear you are not the sort of mech to skip town.”  
Ambulon’s optics narrowed slightly, too slight to be on purpose. Optimus made a note to never play cards with this medic on the same team. “And the terms of this arrangement?”  
“The truth,” Optimus said simply. “I trust you, but Ultra Magnus will need to verify. What was Jhiaxus truly doing, and what were you doing with him? I don’t need all the details right now.”  
“I was always free to go.” Ambulon’s mouth twisted wryly. “All of us assistants were free to go. I was quite replaceable. But I was afraid my replacement would be like the others. They only cared about the subjects” –he spat that word like a curse- “as far as keeping the experiments running smoothly.”  
“And what were the experiments?” Optimus prompted.  
“There were two. Jhiaxus was attempting to kindle embers inside an artificial spark chamber and transfer them into a mech. When the raid occurred, he was close to opening Phase II trials. That was how he got his funding, and covered for the other experiments. There were about fifty mechs who had no idea what was going on in the upper floor. I had minimal contact with them.  
“The upper floor held twelve mechs, all walkaways from the unchanged. Jhiaxus transferred multiple embers in them at a time. He was trying to engineer a natural gestalt.”  
Many meta-cycles ago, when Senator Ratchet had still been a doctor, five mechs had split from a single spark. They had been gestalt from the moment they kindled, the merging routines deep in their systems. Defensor was the first gestalt of his kind; every other one had been artificially created from five mechs, unrelated or adelfi at most. The science had been inspired by ancient legends of spark twins so close they could share a body, but the Protectobots were the first team scientifically verified. The phenomenon had never occurred again.  
“Why were they all walkaways from the unchanged?”  
“Sunstorm’s followers reject modifications, among other things,” Ambulon said. “Jhiaxus thought the lack of them was what let them split their sparks so many times and survive.” Prime nodded; he remembered how shocked he was to discover Skywarp was so skilled a warrior without any military upgrades. “We lost one to suicide once the truth came out, and after that he kept them drugged with zabuyelite despite the risks to the embers.”  
“How did he entice them to volunteer?”  
“It’s difficult, very difficult to leave Sunstorm.” Ambulon clasped his hands together. “To leave everything and everyone you’ve known is hard enough, but Sunstorm teaches to reject large parts of modern life. They –we –leave with no education worth speaking of, no prospects for a job, not even a communications array or a RFID transmitter. Without friends in the world we are homeless and unemployable, without the funds to change that. And they’re not kind to outliers, to anything seen as unnatural. So when he said that there were five mechs in Tesarus who needed help escaping, one of who was an outlier, it didn’t take long at all for him to have plenty of volunteers. I had too many mods for his intentions, but I knew enough medicine to be kept around. Before I got out, I was trained as a midwife.”  
Optimus nodded again. “Thank you. I am sure this information will be valuable, and I will pass on your offer of the medical records for the mechs we rescued.” Even if Ultra Magnus couldn’t use any of it, Prime could read the truth in Ambulon’s pain, in his silences. “I will speak to them about your bail.” He’d been afraid to leave them, afraid to call down the law upon Jhiaxus, and Prime could not honestly blame him, nor allow him to be punished for the failings of the government to earn the people’s trust.  
“Just get that bastard.” Ambulon’s eyes flashed from dark gold to yellow-white. “Put him away before he can steal the mori back.”

* * *

  
Megatron said goodnight to the guard outside his suite and shut the door firmly. He tried to give Ramjet the benefit of the doubt, tried not to hold the fact he wasn’t Skywarp against him…but Ramjet was a sniveling little sycophant that left Megatron with an intense need for a shower.  
His private washrack had been used earlier; since it was cleaned that morning but long enough to let everything dry, the only clue being the rearrangement of the cleansers and the missing sparangos. Megatron cleaned himself quickly, washing away the Rock Lord business and the flaws of the justice system, the budget deliberations and the problem of finding someone to fill in for Skywarp. He didn’t want to replace Skywarp. Megatron liked Skywarp, trusted him, and could stand being around him for hours on end. Those were hard enough requirements to fill without adding in the necessity of a bodyguard capable of defending him, identifying threats, and one capable of discretion. Megatron would just as soon do without, but between the Rock Lords and the latest rumors coming out of Tarn, he didn’t dare.  
Skywarp would have to quit soon, his advancing forging slowing his reflexes and draining his strength. Megatron suspected that this was more to do with the number of embers than anything else. He’d hoped that since Skywarp insisted to go through with this, the laws of thermodynamics would take their course. But the embers hung stubbornly on, draining away at Skywarp’s spark.  
Not that he wished harm to the mori Skywarp already loved. Megatron simply loved Skywarp more, as much as the Lord High Protector was allowed to love another mech.  
Skywarp was in their bed, lying on his cockpit reading a datapad. Megatron tried to sneak up behind him and take a peek, but Skywarp heard him and pushed himself up. “You’re home,” he said, with a brilliant smile and not a word of complaint for the lateness of the hour.  
Megatron sat next to him, the mesh sinking under his weight. “What are you reading?” he asked.  
Skywarp shrugged. “Starscream’s old chemistry textbook. He won’t shut up about it.” He flicked the datapad off and set it aside, leaning against Megatron.  
Megatron wrapped an arm around his waist, feeling Skywarp relax against him, feeling the heat pouring off of his foundry. “Did you eat?”  
Skywarp nodded, the motion nestling his head in the hollow of Megatron’s shoulder. “With Starscream.”  
Running a hand up Skywarp’s thigh, Megatron said, “Did Starscream tell you?”  
“Tell me what?” Skywarp lifted his head to look at Megatron. “That the Rock Lords filed contra bonos mores with the Galactic Council? Yeah, but I don’t know what it means.”  
And that was a problem for the Lord High Protector, a major one, but he had thought that Starscream would have told Skywarp about the other problem, the one that was Megatron’s alone. “No, Jhiaxus had a hearing today.”  
Skywarp was brave, brave enough and more in the face of fear, but though his voice was steady his frame trembled as he sank back into Megatron’s embrace. “About what?”  
“He was let go with a six billion shanix bail.” That wasn’t the only issue brought up in the courtroom, but it was the one that would affect Skywarp the most. The Seeker didn’t need to know about the legal maneuverings, the claim he was there of his own free will, the claim that the embers were kindled with his consent. He didn’t need to hear about the unhappy face Tyrest had made as he explained that his hands were tied and bail could not be denied. The dents Ultra Magnus had made in his table may have given Skywarp some comfort, but not much.  
“He’s free?” Megatron tugged Skywarp on his lap, caressing his wings as if he could brush the fear away with his hands.  
“He’s out of jail.” Skywarp reached up and wrapped his hand around one of Megatron’s shoulder-strut, as if Jhiaxus would leap in at any second and rip him away. “But he can’t come near you,” Megatron continued. “I will take care of it. I will take care of you.”  
Skywarp shuddered one last time, then went limp against Megatron, hiding his face. “And the embers?”  
“Those are your embers.” Megatron almost hoped Jhiaxus could prove that he had nothing to do with them. He feared that the mad scientist might file for custody. Megatron could claim them until his vocalizer died, but with Skywarp as his pallakos, that didn’t mean anything in a courtroom. He cupped the back of Skywarp’s head in one hand and, gently, inexorably, tilted his face up. “I won’t let anything happen to them.”  
Skywarp parted his lips for Megatron’s kiss, one hand tightening on Megatron’s shoulder and the other coming around his neck. Megatron slid his hands down Skywarp’s aft, lifted him easily and pressed him into the cool mesh of the berth. And as Skywarp opened under him, warm and willing with his wrists pinned by one huge hand above his head, Megatron promised to keep him safe, to protect his embers, to give him whatever Cybertron left over.

* * *


	5. εʹ

It was a little hot under all the lights, but Thundercracker wasn’t complaining. He was a soldier, he didn’t complain. Thundercracker had stood guard in rain and sun and sandstorms, against hordes of rampaging aliens. Standing around on the off chance someone was stupid enough or suicidal enough to attack the Lord High Protector or the Prime during a live broadcast was an honor and a vacation.  
It was also boring as the Pit, and almost as hot.  
He could see Starscream down below with the other ministers, and he wondered if Starscream was as ready to be done. Probably not, his sieziegos loved to show off, and he was looking especially good today, shining bright as a star under the lights, markings sharp as the day they’d been painted. Thundercracker wrenched his attention away, before his thoughts wandered in a direction most certainly not conducive to standing guard.  
Skywarp was standing three steps behind and one to the left of Megatron, and only his eyes and Thundercracker’s own soldier-mods let him see the black mech lurking in the shadow. Sometimes, Thundercracker regretted how long he’d avoided Skywarp, jealous of how the mech had almost replaced him.  
And whatever Starscream said, Skywarp had been a replacement while Thundercracker was called up to defend the planet. Even if Starscream had been faithful, he still had invited someone into their house, had fussed over him and showered him with attention and worry, had used Skywarp’s problems to make him forget Thundercracker. But that wasn’t Skywarp’s fault, and Thundercracker would forgive Starscream anything.  
If he had been there, Thundercracker would have been right next to Starscream, opening their home to Skywarp and helping him find his place in the world. Skywarp was alright, was more than alright, and his life had had a turbulent start. If Thundercracker had been there, instead of shaking apart umizoomis, he would have introduced Skywarp to Acid Storm, and Skywarp wouldn’t have wasted all that time trying to catch his attention. And if he’d been there, he and Skywarp would maybe have done something together without the rusted tinge of wondering if Skywarp was going to die in the next meta-cycle, without the scratched overtones of Jhiaxus.  
But that was past, fixed and unchanging, and this was now, with Skywarp toppling over. Wait, what?  
Thundercracker swung down from his perch, rushing over to where Megatron was bellowing for a medic, for the cameras off, for people to give them some room. Ratchet was bulling through the mix, the old doctor turned senator all but throwing gawkers out of the way. Starscream was pushing people away, clearing a circle with the aid of Prime around the two on the ground.  
Megatron knelt, Skywarp’s head in his lap, and as Thundercracker slipped in behind Ratchet’s jetwash he could hear the low rumble, too low to make out words. The blue mech looked around, assessing the situation, and then radioed the other guards positioned around the room.  
“I need a perimeter in here,” he said, naming the mechs he wanted to come in. “The rest of you, clear the room.”  
Technically, Sentinel was in charge, but he was a useless wall-prop and everyone knew it. The security force responded instantly to Thundercracker’s orders, most herding the gathered mechs out while a few took up position around the gathered dignitaries. There was no guarantee that Skywarp hadn’t taken a shot for someone.  
Or, as Thundercracker took up position at Ratchet’s back, one hand on his rifle, that Skywarp hadn’t been the first to succumb to some sort of multiple-target attack. A sonic wave Thundercracker would have picked up on, and if not him Soundwave standing at the edge of the Senators’ huddle, and Soundwave would certainly have picked up any sort of transmission, but a gas wasn’t out of the question, or a nanite cloud.  
Ratchet was swearing fit to blister paint, but he wasn’t calling for the building to be evacuated. Starscream sidled up to Thundercracker, putting his head very close like they were discussing the logistics over shortwave.  
They were talking over shortwave at least.  
“He shouldn’t have come.” Starscream was vibrating, restraining himself from pushing Ratchet away. “I told him to stay home.”  
“You were right,” Thundercracker soothed. “You usually are. He should have listened to you.”  
“Alright,” Ratchet said, standing up and transforming. “This wasn’t an attack. Somebody load him in, he needs a hospital.”  
The Lord High Protector gathered Skywarp in his arms and stood, daring anyone to comment on his tenderness. Skywarp’s optics flickered, one hand came up, reaching for Megatron. Megatron bent his head, and Thundercracker couldn’t hear what he said, Megatron’s voice still subsonic. He could feel the harmonies and the cadence well enough, fill in the rest with his imagination well enough, and he looked away, not wanting to witness something that should have been private.  
“I’ll stay with him,” Thundercracker promised Starscream. “In case someone takes advantage of the Lord High Protector’s distraction.” Starscream nodded, brushing his wingtip against Thundercracker’s. Because he could, Thundercracker took his hand, kissed his fingers. “Someone will have to deal with the press,” he suggested, and Starscream nodded.  
Then Starscream slipped from Thundercracker’s sieziegos to the Minister of War, sharp and sly and deadly dangerous. He stalked towards the door where the press was gathering, and a few of the smarter ones scattered. Thundercracker spared a minute to admire the sway of his back, then comm’ed Breakdown to take over while he was gone, and followed Ratchet outside, where he and Megatron took to the skies, following Ratchet to the hospital in grim silence.

* * *

  
Skywarp drifted in and out of consciousness, not really registering his surroundings. Megatron was there, saying something he didn’t quite understand, and his optics flickered on long enough to register Starscream and Thundercracker standing nearby, and someone was swearing.  
And then Megatron was telling him, “I need to put you in the ambulance, don’t panic, my star. You’re safe.”  
Skywarp nodded, and reached for Megatron when the world spun. “Shh,” Megatron said, more mechanical purr than word. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”  
And Skywarp trusted Megatron, almost enough to hold panic at bay while he was strapped down and shoved into darkness. He struggled, weakly, and it was just like with Jhiaxus, did someone drug his energon again where was Megatron and why didn’t his comms work? Skywarp tried to warp, tried to thrash, tried to scream, but all he managed was to tumble backwards into the abyss, clutching terror, unheard, abandoned once again.  
When Skywarp awoke again, the room was bright and when his hands came up to shield his optics they were no longer tied down. He heard the scrape of a chair and waited, holding still as he could-if he’d known someone was watching him, he would have feigned unconsciousness until he knew what was going on.  
But when he peeked through his fingers, it was only Megatron returning, and Skywarp sighed in relief. Megatron sat down, and when Skywarp reached for him the big mech met him halfway, folding Skywarp’s hand delicately between sharp claws strong enough to rip it right off.  
“You gave us a scare,” Megatron said, softly, and Skywarp winced.  
“I’m sorry.”  
Megatron accepted his apology with a nod. “They say it was the heat, and that you were underfueled.”  
Well, that explained the energon line in his arm. “I’m sorry,” Skywarp said again. He truly was.  
“You cannot guard me anymore.” Megatron untangled one hand to tap on Skywarp’s chest, where his plating rearranged to accommodate his foundry. “Your first priority needs to be your vrefos’ health, and your own.”  
Skywarp tried to protest, but Megatron cupped the side of his face in one massive hand. Most of Skywarp thrilled at the contact, like he always did, but part of him remembered other, less gentle touches from not all that long ago, fixing his head in place to force energon down his intake. Skywarp turned his head into Megatron’s palm, needing to prove to himself he could.  
“You knew this time would come,” Megatron continued, and that didn’t make it sting any less. Skywarp nodded, and Megatron, thankfully, released his head. He regarded Skywarp with terrible, burning optics, and Skywarp felt compelled to explain, somehow, or something, or anything to make him happier.  
“I just…” he began.  
“Do not concern yourself. Concentrate on your embers.” Skywarp tried not to let his cringe show. He could do more than care for nipii now, he really could! He nodded, and Megatron didn’t exactly smile but he looked happier.  
And then Ratchet saved them by sweeping in the room, trailed by a nurse and Thundercracker. “You,” Ratchet said, pointing an angry red finger at Skywarp, “are an idiot.”  
Skywarp offered him a grin and half a shrug. “I felt fine?”  
“Idiot,” Ratchet repeated with a snort. “I ought to tie you to the bed. Do you know how close you came to dying in the background of Prime’s speech?”  
Skywarp didn’t have an answer, risking a glance at Megatron. Would he allow Ratchet to carry out his threat?  
“The scans show that one of the embers is ready to coalesce, maybe more,” the nurse said softly. “That could cause a spike in output even in a fully-fuelled mech.”  
Ratchet nodded, an unhappy frown on his face. “I know. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, this time, and let you go home once you’re topped up, on one condition.”  
“Yes?” Skywarp asked. He would promise anything to not be tied down, what was with today and strapping him to beds?  
“You’re not alone,” Ratchet fixed him with a scowl so fierce Skywarp shrank back towards Megatron. “If that happens again, and you don’t get help immediately, your spark could extinguish and you would die.”  
“Surely it’s not so dire,” Megatron said, but his claws were cutting into the plating on Skywarp’s hand.  
Ratchet folded his arms. “Your fuel pump cut out,” he said to Skywarp. “That causes you to fall over, so gravity can help the flow of energon to your spark. Your line pressure is so low, though, that the energon pooled everywhere but your spark chamber. All we had to do was turn you over, but the window to do that is very short. A matter of kliks.”  
“Oh,” Skywarp said, his voice very small. He knew about that, of course, he’d turned over a few carrying mechs back in the days before Megatron, but he hadn’t thought it could happen to him.  
“And between the number of embers you’re carrying,” Ratchet continued, “and the part where you’re not taking in nearly enough energon, that’s more likely to happen again than not.”  
Megatron rubbed his thumb over the back of Skywarp’s hand. “Perhaps it would be best,” he mused. “I cannot be with him every hour of every day.”  
“You don’t have to be,” Ratchet said sourly. “Just close enough to hear the crash.”  
“I can do it,” Thundercracker said, moving to stand at the foot of the bed.  
“Where the hell did you come from?” Ratchet squawked.  
“Why don’t you come stay with me and Starscream,” Thundercracker asked. “Let us take care of you.”  
And that sounded so much better than being strapped to a medberth, Skywarp didn’t even think about saying no.

* * *

  
Ratchet looked up when Drift came through his office door. “Ambulon’s here to see you,” the secretary said. “He says it’s important but not urgent.”  
“I can talk to him now.” Ratchet closed the incredibly boring budget proposal he had been reading. There was nothing in there to be outraged or joyful about, but enough changes that he had to read it carefully before making his decision. Unlike other Senators, who voted along party lines, for personal favors or political points, Ratchet read every piece of legislation before voting, and voted in the best interest of his constituents, not the party he was nominally affiliated with or the special interest groups that courted him with donations. It worked to keep his constituents voting him in again and again…but Ratchet could afford a war chest out of his personal fortune that few mechs could match even with donations.  
Drift nodded, and left briefly to usher Ambulon in. The resident’s paint was flaking worse than usual, and he looked as unhappy as Ratchet had ever seen him, vents cycling madly and fingers twitching.  
“Sit,” Ratchet said, pointing with his stylus to the chair. “What’s going on? Someone giving you trouble?”  
“In a manner of speaking.” Ambulon perched on the chair. “I was approached today at the clinic by someone who recognized me from Jhiaxus’ laboratory.”  
“Screw them,” Ratchet said. “You’re doing your time and that’s all that matters.”  
Ambulon’s frown deepened. “No, it was one of the lab assistants, Trepan. He had a message from Jhiaxus, for me.”  
“Go on,” Ratchet said.  
“Jhiaxus is looking for his,” Ambulon’s face twisted in disgust as he quoted the message’s exact words. “Test subjects.” He produced a thin bit of metal, one most mechs would discard or recycle as worthless scrap. It had a number painted on it. “If I know anything about them, where they are or how they are doing, he wants me to contact him here.” Ambulon dropped the bit of metal on the desk.  
It landed, one end and then the other, an oddly dissonant clink. “When did he come?”  
“Twelve days ago. I thought to not bother anyone about it, but he returned this morning. He’d heard about Skywarp collapsing somehow and wanted to know if I could access his medical records.”  
Ratchet sat back. “Well. That’s a pile of slag. Not your story, but the idea.” He didn’t say that Ambulon would never co-operate. He didn’t have to. “And you brought this to me? Not the police?”  
Ambulon blinked. “Oh. I suppose I should have done that. I’m not used to the idea,” he apologized.  
Ratchet didn’t press for details. He stood up, and handed the number back to Ambulon. “Let’s go take it straight to Prime.” Surely this was a violation of the depraved scientist's bail?

* * *

  
Megatron found the Rock Lord situation highly inconvenient.  
The living rocks were steadily encroaching on the edges of Cybertronian territory, and Soundwave reported they were after the metal that made up Cybertron and its inhabitants. The Rock Lord’s homeworld was stripped bare of what little metal it had possessed, and the Cybertronian empire already had a complex and efficient mining infrastructure. There were rumors, too, of converting some Cybertronians into drones, dark whispers of extracted sparks. Megatron personally thought they were slag, memories of the horror that was the Umizoomis. But Soundwave was investigating that as seriously as anything else. All the signs pointed to war, to invasion, and Megatron had his hands more than full trying to prepare.  
Complicating that was Starscream. His Minister of War had been appointed to that position for a reason, he was sure. Megatron just couldn’t remember it at the moment. Starscream was nearly impossible to locate, communicating with Megatron almost exclusively through cold, impersonal emails. Where he once had flitted about everywhere, poking his long fingers into everything, now he would disappear for days. He kept up just enough to not warrant an official reprimand –yet.  
Megatron should be easier on him. He knew that Starscream wasn’t playing hooky for fun. Skywarp’s time was running out, and Starscream was busy arranging for moros furniture or funerals, planning for every contingency. And Skywarp himself needed help with the most simple of tasks. Seven embers, seven protoforms coalescing around them with protoform Skywarp could not spare. Seven embers sucking energon from Skywarp, draining the very essence of his spark. He didn’t have any self-repair nanites left for his own body, he didn’t have enough strength to run his gyros and his servos at the same time. Megatron’s pallakos couldn’t even fly.  
The Lord High Protector had never heard of a Seeker who couldn’t fly that wasn’t mortally wounded.  
But Thundercracker would take care of him now, keep him from falling over and bleeding out, make sure he ate and recharged. And protect him too, from the other problem, the one Megatron would like to be able to focus on, but couldn’t because he was trying to cover for Starscream’s sudden need to be home.  
Jhiaxus was free.  
Ultra Magnus was trying to build a case against him, but the mad scientist had covered his tracks well. They could identify his assistants easily enough, but linking their boss to their crimes was turning out to be much, much harder. All of them, save one, had kept to the story about informed consent and buyer’s remorse. That one, Megatron suspected was telling the truth. But there was no proof, and he was one voice against seven, seven others who claimed Ambulon himself had committed the crimes, and was now spinning vrefos tales to save his own plating. Without a way to prove who had locked the doors and doctored the energon, the law did not allow them to risk imprisoning a guilty mech.  
And some of the things that Ambulon had reported happened weren’t technically illegal. Of course they weren’t illegal. Something had to be imagined before a law could be written against it, and only Jhiaxus’ mind was capable of such depravities.  
Prime had been gravely concerned that Jhiaxus thought Ambulon would hand over Skywarp’s medical records. Merely asking for them wasn’t illegal, but giving them to him was out of the question, and so Jhiaxus was free to make all the inquiries he wanted. That was partly the reason Skywarp was once more living with Starscream, and most of the reason he would raise his nipii there as long as Jhiaxus wasn’t safely chained to an asteroid speeding towards a star. A meta-cycle ago Megatron would have said it was impossible for a vrefos to just disappear off the streets forever, not with properly attentive genei. Then they discovered that Ironfist hadn’t volunteered. She’d been kidnapped.  
It was a giant slagging mess, and Megatron didn’t want to deal with any of it.  
At least Skywarp would be safe. Megatron regretted losing the stolen moments with him that were all they got these days, but he would be safe. After the safety of Cybertron as a whole, there was nothing on this plane more important to Megatron.

* * *

  
“What did you say?” Thundercracker asked. Skywarp certainly wasn’t paying a damn bit of attention.  
“The twenty-second of paracycle eleven will be our target date,” Ratchet repeated, winding a cord. “The earliest I’d feel comfortable would be the first of that paracycle, and the latest would be the twentieth of the next. The twenty-second is the midpoint. If he hasn’t delivered by then, we’ll go in and detach them manually.”  
“That’s still quite a range!” Thundercracker protested.  
“Can Ambulon be there?” Skywarp asked, oblivious still.  
“If you want, and if he agrees,” Ratchet said, after a moment of shocked silence. “I don’t see why not.”  
“But why would you want him?” Thundercracker wanted to know, more than the actual reason, what Skywarp would claim. “Not something to do with Sunstorm, I hope.”  
Skywarp made a face. “Slag no!” he said, flicking his fingers to banish the thought. “No, it’s just, he was there last time so maybe he knows some trick to pulling off seven sparks at once.”  
“There’s not really a trick to it, though,” Ratchet said. “Theoretically, it should be just like one spark, seven times over.”  
Skywarp shook his head, and for the first time in front of Ratchet, he didn’t look like a vrefos waiting for his gummi. “There has to be a trick to it,” he said, half-pleading. “He was there last time and I didn’t die. I want him to do it again. I don’t want to die.” He shuttered his optics, looked at the floor.


	6. ϝʹ

The worst part about being assigned to Skywarp was that Thundercracker didn’t get to see Starscream as often as he’d like. He only got to see Starscream after the Minister came home, and as for privacy…well, Skywarp spent plenty of time in recharge, true, but it was at once too much time and too light recharge, and either way guilt cooled both of them too much. Skywarp’s time was near, and then the couple would have all the time in the world.  
And truthfully, with Skywarp curled under his wing like the little adelfos he never had, heavy weight against his arm, time didn’t seem to matter. He may have agreed to this for Starscream’s sake –he could no more tell Starscream no than stop the planet from wandering- but Skywarp had his own magnetic hypnotism, and Thundercracker didn’t regret a single choice he’d made.  
Well, maybe letting Skywarp use him as a backrest. Slagger was heavy.  
Still, he didn’t push him off until Starscream burst through the door, dropped a stack of energon cubes on the table, fell onto his favorite stool and said, “We need to talk.”  
“Mrphl,” Skywarp said, lifting his head from Thundercracker’s shoulder, still half in standby. Starscream tossed him an energon cube, glowing bright enough to be a landing light.  
“Wake up,” Starscream said, rather crossly. “You need to be part of this.”  
“Part of what?” Thundercracker asked, accepting a regular cube from Starscream.  
“Decisions must be made!”  
“No,” Skywarp said, flopping painfully back against Thundercracker. Painful for Thundercracker, at any rate.  
“And when those avegi come, where exactly are you going to put them?”  
“In my cockpit, same as my enkyos,” Skywarp flicked his optics off.  
“I don’t think they’ll all fit,” Thundercracker put in dryly.  
“We’ll turn the study into a nursery,” Starscream said. “I’m getting seven cradles delivered.”  
Thundercracker thought that was rather optimistic, but refrained from saying anything. “I’m not moving the desk.”  
“No, I need you to pick up the energon. And dispensers. And some toys. Nipii need toys, don’t they?”  
“Who said we’re staying here?” Skywarp asked.  
“Do you have anywhere else to go?” Starscream snapped. “What else do they need, I can’t think of anything. If you do, get that too.”  
“Do you have anywhere you’d rather be?” Thundercracker asked, more gently. “I’m sure Megatron could arrange for something, if you wanted to be closer to him.”  
“Nonsense. They’re staying here,” Starscream declared. “Megatron can get his shiny aft over here when he wants to see them and don’t make that face Skywarp.”  
“So when you said decisions needed to be made,” Thundercracker began, and Starscream was giving him that look, thank Primus for Skywarp, “what you meant was you’d made decisions.”  
“And then there’s the emergency paperwork,” Starscream said, producing a datapad. “You need to name someone to take them, if you die.” Skywarp’s flinch was audible against Thundercracker. “Oh, don’t be like that,” Starscream said. “It’s just a formality. It doesn’t matter if you put us or Megatron down. Just do it before the next time you see Ratchet or he’ll grind his gears at you.”  
“He’s not so scary,” Skywarp said, because as much as Thundercracker had come to love him, he was an idiot.  
“Just do it, or they’ll put your nosokos down.” Starscream sighed, and rubbed between his optics. He was getting a processor ache, Thundercracker could tell, and he wondered how much work Starscream had put into this already. Cradles were easy enough to come by, but most mechs produced their own nipios-grade energon. He and Starscream were due to visit Ratchet soon and get their own filters installed. Still, a single nipios could take energon from two or even three adults, and Skywarp was expecting seven.  
“Novalight wouldn’t be that bad, though,” Skywarp hedged.  
“I suppose if one of them is also an outlier, he can teleport out of the closet she locks him in,” Starscream said. “The important part, because you’re not going to die, is whoever you name will be notified when they detach.”  
“That wasn’t part of the exorcism.” Skywarp curled in a little closer to Thundercracker, who put an arm around him, not fully understanding the significance of that. It didn’t sound good. “And anyways, you don’t know she still goes to church.”  
“You want to take that risk?” Starscream demanded.  
“Megatron wouldn’t let anything happen to them, would he?”  
Starscream made a rude noise. “Right, because our most noble Lord High Protector is all about throwing the rules out in favor of his whims of the moment.”  
“Hey, it’s not a big deal,” Thundercracker said, sliding a hand up Skywarp’s wing. “Just put us down, or Megatron, or your nosokos if you want.”  
“Novalight is not an option,” Starscream said, squeezing his cube until it squeaked. Skywarp backed away from him, ending up half in Thundercracker’s lap. Thundercracker’s own retreat was cut off by the arm of the couch.  
“What’s so bad about your nosokos, Skywarp?”  
“She exorcises helpless tekni,” Starscream spat. “There’s no scientific evidence for demons, and even if there was, do you know what an exorcism is?”  
“She didn’t…she wasn’t part of the ritual,” Skywarp said, turning towards Thundercracker and away from Starscream.  
“She didn’t stop it,” Starscream argued, as if it was the same thing.  
Skywarp closed his optics, not before Thundercracker saw the ghost of old pain. “She thought they were helping me,” he said. “That I was possessed by a demon.”  
“And that the solution was to beat you until it vacated?”  
Skywarp didn’t say anything, just leaned his head against Thundercracker’s shoulder. Starscream snorted and looked at the ceiling. “I know she won’t lock them in a closet,” he said. “Novalight knows right from wrong.”  
“I’d say not beating tekni nor locking them up is pretty basic stuff,” Thundercracker said dryly, soothing the sting of his words with a hand between Skywarp’s intakes.  
“She’s never laid a hand on her own,” Skywarp said. “Novalight was a good trefos to me and she’s a good trefos to her kids and she’d be a good trefos to my embers.”  
“Right,” Starscream sneered. “Because you’re such a well-adjusted person.” Skywarp pressed against Thundercracker, who had to hug him to keep him from toppling onto the floor. “Tell me, are any of hers planning to go to college? Is higher education still a sin? That’s probably for the best, saves them from having to pick a major. You have a hard enough time picking out a movie, let alone what will determine your job for the rest of your life.” Starscream snapped his vocalizer off with a sharp click.  
Skywarp was vibrating against Thundercracker’s chest, and he stroked Skywarp’s head until the tremors stopped. “She doesn’t know any better,” Skywarp mumbled. “She never had you.” Megatron should be here, in Thundercracker’s place. But Thundercracker stood in for Megatron a lot lately.  
Starscream sighed, and Thundercracker cursed Skywarp’s weight, wishing someone else was here so he could go to Starscream. But he was trapped, and Starscream looked at him, and he saw that Starscream saw, and he smiled a little, for it was better to get this over with quickly. “It would almost be a moot point, since of course you’ll be around to take care of them,” Starscream began. He kept saying it, even though nobody had ever had seven embers at once and survived. No one had ever had more than three, that Thundercracker had ever heard of. It was enough to make him hold Skywarp when he should be taking care of Starscream, enough that Starscream humored Skywarp on almost everything. Skywarp was going to die, and these precious avegi would be all that was left of Starscream’s best friend, who he called adelfos.  
“And we’ll help,” Thundercracker added. Skywarp had wormed his way into Thundercracker’s spark as well, tucked between his trefos and his old wingmates. All three gone now, and Skywarp soon to follow.  
“But if you leave it blank, they’ll notify your next of kin when the avegi detach,” Starscream finished. “And that’s her. Do you want to do that to her? She hasn’t heard from you for meta-cycles.”  
“Did you have a fight?” Thundercracker asked softly, when Skywarp didn’t say anything. “With her?”  
“I had to stop talking to her. She was getting in trouble because I’m a prostitute.” Skywarp sat back and scrubbed his hand over his face. “They were gonna take her tekni.”  
“Apostate,” Starscream corrected. He set his drink down and leaned forwards. “If you want to find her again, I’ll help you, but a government notice won’t do her any favors. When do you see Ratchet next?”  
“Two days out,” Thundercracker said, tilting his head. Starscream nodded behind Skywarp’s back; he’d explain later. “So you can fill it out later.”  
Skywarp turned around, in Thundercracker’s embrace still, and looked at the pad. “You guys or Megatron?”  
“Is there someone else you had in mind?” Thundercracker asked.  
Skywarp shook his head and tucked away the form. “Who else could I trust?”  
“Hey,” Starscream said, sliding to his knees on the floor in front of them. He reached up and took Skywarp’s face in his hands, pressed their foreheads together. “It doesn’t matter what you put down, I’m going to take care of them and you.”  
“I owe you,” Skywarp said. “So much already.”  
“Damn straight.” Starscream stood up and returned to his chair. “And I intend to collect with interest. Now, have you thought about colors?”  
“Put that away, fill it out later.” Starscream waved at the datapad. “If you want to put us down, put us down. If you want Megatron, he already said he’d do it. So you don’t have to ask either of us. Now put it away and drink your energon.”  
Skywarp did, and Thundercracker followed Starscream’s lead and didn’t say anything. Such a major decision would of course overwhelm Skywarp, and he’d need some time to sort himself out. Thundercracker hoped Skywarp would choose them, but didn’t dare share that thought. It was too close to wishing him dead.  
“I didn’t order sparganii,” Starscream continued. “Have you thought about colors at all?”  
“Um,” Skywarp said. Thundercracker sighed.  
“You figured you’d get whatever was cheapest, didn’t you?”  
Skywarp shrugged. “Well, it’s a bit harder than a movie.”

* * *

  
Skywarp onlined his optics at the touch from Thundercracker on his shoulder. “Hey, Starscream,” he said.  
“Not talking to you still,” Starscream replied. “Get off my sieziegos’ lap and stop existing. I only want to deal with adults today.”  
“He filled it out,” Thundercracker said softly, muting the television. “We filed it over the cortext.”  
Starscream sat down on Thundercracker’s other side. “Good. Who did you put down?”  
“You and I for guardians,” Thundercracker answered for him as Starscream pushed Skywarp away with his foot. “Me alone for medical proxy.” Starscream snorted and settled his feet in Thundercracker’s lap for rubbing. Skywarp relocated to Thundercracker’s shoulder. “In case you don’t get there right away.”  
Skywarp dragged one of Starscream’s feet into his own lap. He watched Thundercracker closely, but there didn’t seem to be a pattern to it. Starscream sighed happily and leaned against the table leg. “I’ve been looking at cradles,” he said. “But from what I’m told, they won’t be spending much time in the nursery. It’ll be for storage more than anything else.”  
Thundercracker rolled one of Starscream’s toes between his fingers. “Where will they be all day then”  
“In here, probably. We can put a rolling cradle or two over there.” Starscream pointed at the couch. “They won’t be able to watch television until well after the point they no longer need to be held constantly and fed every two hours.”  
Thundercracker shrugged. “Better than staring at a blank wall all day,” he said.  
Starscream nodded at him. “They’re quite distractible, but the television will be too far away. At least until they’re old enough to understand eating fixes hunger.”  
Skywarp knew that, from sitting with Novalight and watching soap operas at far too early in the morning. They had spent hours discussing who had interfaced with who, simply so there was something to talk about besides mori. Even the unchanged, who held reproduction as a sacrament, believed that a new enkyos had to have something to think about besides his mori, from time to time, or go mad. “I never said we were going to stay here,” Skywarp spoke up. Under his hands, Starscream’s toes curled.  
“Of course you are. Don’t be silly.”  
Thundercracker bumped Skywarp with an elbow. “You are more than welcome to stay. Seven embers, you’re going to need help too. I’ll do it if you show me how.”  
“I could always,” Skywarp started, but Starscream interrupted him with a glare.  
“Could always what? Go back to Megatron, with a thousand people coming and going at all hours of the night?”  
“I could get my own place,” Skywarp said. He didn’t really want to. He wanted to stay here, with Thundercracker who was terrible at video games and Starscream who monopolized the remote. Where there was a really comfortable couch and windows big enough to take off from and the little shop down the street with the best gummies. “It’s not like when I left my genei.” His genei, like all unchanged, had not given their nipii even the most basic upgrades. When Skywarp had walked away from that way of life, he didn’t have a comm. suite or a RFID set or any of the little things so common, it was assumed everyone had one. He had to live with Starscream at first, he didn’t have the physical ability to get a job or rent an apartment of his own, or even shop at any store that didn’t accept cash.  
“Do you remember when you first moved in here,” Starscream said after a minute, taking his feet back and folding them under his body.  
Skywarp nodded. “Yeah. I owe you a lot.” Too much to ever pay back, almost as much as he owed his embers.  
“Specifically,” Starscream said, “you owe me your firstborn. Plus your second-born, as interest.”  
In between them, Thundercracker put both hands over his face. “I don’t like where this is going.”  
Starscream ignored him. “Now, I don’t have time to raise tekni, so you’ll be the live-in nanny. So you might as well bring the other five along. Too, it’s not fair to separate them from their nosoki. The issue is closed. What color padding should we get?”  
“Starscream,” Skywarp began. He wasn’t sure how to thank his friend, how to acknowledge the gift of safety for his embers.  
“The issue is closed. What color padding should we get?”

* * *

  
The doorbell rang, and Thundercracker hit the pause button. Not that it mattered; Skywarp’s mechanocat had shot his turbomoose down so many times Skywarp was starting to question Thundercracker’s legendary military prowess. Starscream wasn’t exactly known for his honesty, after all.  
“I’ll get it,” Thundercracker said, totally unnecessary. Whatever Starscream said, Skywarp still felt weird about answering the door or calling this place home. Even though Starscream had kept his room just how he left it, (a mess) even though Thundercracker insisted on Skywarp’s opinions as they rearranged things to fit the seven incoming bitlets, Skywarp still didn’t feel quite at home.  
But this place was better than home. This place was safe. There was no closet filled with memories, no stains of his own energon on the floor. Only safety, only joy, unlike even Megatron’s office where Shockwave had told him about the walkaways, the bed where he’d lost one precious ember, the room where they’d threatened to extinguish his embers and the ceiling he’d first seen when he’d woken, amazed that the building was still standing when everything else was in ruins.  
Skywarp shook his head and exited out of the game. Thundercracker was coming back, with someone else’s footsteps behind him. “He’s in here,” Thundercracker said, smiling though his wings were distinctly unhappy.  
And then Megatron came in behind him and all Skywarp could think about was how to get in his arms without tripping over his own feet.  
He didn’t quite make it, but Megatron caught him, and held him close, and kissed him, and that was all that mattered for a long moment.  
When he came back down to Cybertron, Thundercracker had disappeared as neatly as if he was a teleporter himself, leaving behind two cubes of energon and a plate of goodies. Skywarp grinned, and towed Megatron over to the couch. Megatron smiled as Skywarp curled into his side, and stroked down the purple stripe on his wing. “How have you been?” Megatron asked.  
Skywarp shrugged. “Busy,” he said, which was true. He was very busy when he was awake. Once the mori came, how much time would he have to embarrass Thundercracker in video games? “We have a lot to get done still.”  
“I’m sorry I can’t spare more time,” Megatron said. “The Rock Lords are challenging our ownership of several key planets, and I fear we may have to resort to military action.”  
Skywarp didn’t know why that would be so bad, but Megatron knew far more about war than he did. “Well, thank you for keeping me and my bitlets safe from metal-mining aliens who would strip the plating from our armor and melt it down to please their false gods,” he said with a kiss.  
“Where did that come from?” Megatron reached for the bowl of goodies on the table.  
Skywarp grinned. “There’s this game where you go to school with aliens because, honestly I wasn’t really paying all that much attention but I saved a guy from being eaten by the school nurse. I kind of wish I didn’t because he’s a jerk.”  
Megatron fed Skywarp a few of the goodies, only the colors he knew Skywarp liked, and shook his head. “I will never understand your games.”  
“This one’s weird even by video game standards,” Skywarp said. “I just rescued my alien suitor.”  
“Don’t you usually have to rescue your suitor, though?”  
Skywarp shrugged. “I’ve never had to rescue my boyfriend from my insane math teacher who bleaches himself and is attempting to steal his liver, which Thundercracker says is kind of like a filter and removing it is fatal to most aliens.”  
“So it is,” Megatron said. One of his hands came up to rest over the heat of Skywarp’s foundry, the other fed the Seeker more green goodies.  
“What’s wrong?” Skywarp asked, tipping his head up to look at Megatron.  
Megatron didn’t bother to deny it. “One of the mechs rescued from Jhiaxus passed into the Well this morning,” he said. “From laying avegi.”  
“Oh,” Skywarp said, wrapping both his hands around Megatron’s larger one.  
“He was carrying five avegi. Only five,” Megatron said with a tap on Skywarp’s chest. Skywarp let himself be pulled closer, sitting on Megatron rather than next to him.  
Skywarp thought some of the mechs that Jhiaxus had kept might have gone through more than one round of “treatment,” but he didn’t say anything, just let Megatron feed him his energon, thick and gross and radioactive.  
He drank it slowly, letting Megatron control it, letting Megatron lean him back against a broad silver chest. Megatron sat the cube down when it was half empty. Skywarp wished he wouldn’t have; he much preferred to drink the stuff in one gulp, as quickly as possible, to avoid the taste. But he didn’t say anything, instead asking, “Did he have a timing belt?”  
“I don’t think so,” Megatron said, running a thumb around the edges of Skywarp’s cockpit. “What is that?”  
“It’s a thing the unchanged used to use,” Skywarp said. “It does…something, makes detaching easier.”  
“No, he wasn’t one of the unchanged,” Megatron said, lifting the cube to Skywarp’s lips again.  
With his talk not even close to desperately empty, it rebelled against the thick oily dreck. Skywarp forced it down anyways, nestling in the contours of Megatron’s armour. “That’s why,” he said, once Megatron had taken the now-empty cube away again. “Ambulon was telling me, some mods can pull on your spark a lot, and that’s part of why unchanged can split so many times. Because not having mods is kind of their whole….thing.” Skywarp waved his hand in a circle.  
“You upgraded yourself,” Megatron said, touching the side of Skywarp’s head where his radio was installed.  
Skywarp tilted into Megatron’s hand. “Not that many. Not really even enough to get by. I was going to but you have to wait in between, so. I’ll do it later.”  
Megatron nodded thoughtfully, then rested his head against the back of Skywarp’s neck. “Will that be enough to make a difference, I wonder.”  
“Yes,” Skywarp said firmly, and then he reassured Megatron that he was healthy and strong the best way he could, until cooling metal ticked under his cheek and Megatron stopped running his hands over Skywarp like he’d never touch him again.

* * *

  
The Rusty Taco was a good place to meet someone, busy and bright, with high booths and clear sightlines. Thundercracker sat on the outside edge of the bench and toyed with the straw in his cube. The lazily swirling glitter caught the light and cast faint rainbows on the tabletop, on Skywarp’s hands, on his untouched cube glowing with anti-emetic radiation.  
Novalight was late, an hour and more.  
The door opened for the thirty-second time since they’d sat down, and Skywarp lifted his head to dully scan the faces of those that came in. Then he blinked, his optics flashing off and on as they rebooted. He stood up as quickly as he was able, and waved frantically. Thundercracker followed his gaze and saw a Seeker, blue and black with a pair of pink wingstripes, stop in surprise. Recognition lit up her face, and she hurried over to where they were sitting. Skywarp teleported out of the booth and right into her arms, laughing. She hugged him, and they stood in a silent embrace everyone else pretended not to see.  
And then Skywarp towed her over to where Thundercracker was sitting. “TC, this is my nosokos. Nova, this is TC.” He felt the cold tingle of a recognition scan wash over him, even as he scanned her himself. She was carrying no weapons and a vrefos in her cockpit, which was painted over.  
“Hello,” Novalight said, as Skywarp ushered her across the table from them. She didn’t say anything about the rifles Thundercracker had mounted on his arms, or the larger one folded and stowed on his back, or the bombs or the soldier mods. Skywarp grinned, and warped back into his seat.  
“TC’s cool,” he said, taking a swig from his cube. Thundercracker was faintly surprised he’d managed two jumps, short as they had been. He could feel Skywarp’s arm trembling with fatigue as he set the cube down. Skywarp didn’t explain Thundercracker’s weapons further, and Novalight didn’t ask. “Remember Starscream? Lived behind us? Yeah, this is his sieziegos.”  
“I remember Starscream,” Novalight said. Her voice had the same raspy sexiness Starscream’s did, that Thundercracker secretly envied. She tilted her head, giving Skywarp a look that reminded him of Slipstream, for some reason, and not because they were both femmes.  
“Anyways, my tin roof rusted,” Skywarp announced. The waiter, unnoticed by the siblings, gave Thundercracker a weak smile. He shrugged in return. He didn’t know, he was just there to scrape Skywarp off the floor and shoot rogue science thugs.  
“Oh, congratulations!” Novalight reached across the table, grabbed Skywarp’s hand and squeezed. “When does he detach? Who donated, do I know him? How do you feel? Is he sucking you dry? Is that why you look like congealed scrap?”  
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Skywarp said, laughing a little. “Ratchet wants to detach them early, around the twenty-second.”  
“Them?” Novalight squeezed Skywarp’s hands. “Twins?”  
“More,” Skywarp grinned.  
“Triplets?”  
“More.”  
Thundercracker facepalmed. “Seven,” he said, trying to not completely kill the excitement. No-one had been this excited about Skywarp’s embers save Skywarp himself.  
“Seven?” Novalight grinned. “You’ll beat me in one fell swoop.”  
“How many do you have now?” Skywarp asked.  
“I have five,” she said, releasing one of his hands to touch her cockpit. “So how are you feeling?”  
Thundercracker tuned them out and resumed his scanning of the restaurant. It was busy, so it would be hard to overhear –but it was also easy for someone to slip in amongst the crowd. The waiter came back to take Novalight’s order, and when he returned he brought a refill for Thundercracker, and, surprisingly, Skywarp. This was the most Skywarp had eaten without a fuss in days, and Thundercracker hoped nobody would regret that later.  
Halfway through the fourth round, Skywarp poked Thundercracker. “You don’t mind, do you, TC?”  
Thundercracker decided the person near the door wasn’t a threat, and turned to the black Seeker. “Don’t mind what?” he asked cautiously.  
“Nova said she’d get me a timing belt, can she mail it to your house?”  
Thundercracker had never heard of a timing belt before, and his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What does it do? It better not be another paint bomb.”  
“I’ll leave that out,” Novalight promised solemnly. “It makes detaching safer with the power of prayer.”  
“Sure, okay,” Thundercracker said. “As long as it doesn’t explode, you can send all the useless trinkets to my address you want to.” If Skywarp wanted to waste time and hope on things that couldn’t possibly have an effect, well, who was Thundercracker to argue.  
“It’s not useless,” Novalight said. “I’m not sure how it works, but it does.”  
“Totally,” Skywarp agreed.  
“If you say so.” Thundercracker didn’t believe them, but it wasn’t his place. Starscream’s, maybe, or Megatron’s, or Ratchet’s, but not his.  
“It truly does,” Novalight insisted. “How many people do you know die when their spark splits? One in five, one in seven?”  
“That sounds about right,” Thundercracker said. “And the more embers they kindle, the more dangerous it gets.” His own trefos was one of them who’d split his spark too many times to maintain cohesion, without a vrefos ever surviving. Vrefi died even more often than their pedii.  
“Didn’t you ever wonder how the unchanged had such huge families?”  
“Comparative religion is not my field of study,” Thundercracker said. “That would be acoustic engineering.”  
“Most people we knew growing up had about twelve,” Skywarp said. “And no doctors.”  
“I don’t know how the timing belt works,” Novalight repeated. “But it does. My sieziegos’ adelfos has split his spark ten times already, twice with twins. Take it to your doctor, have him examine it. What do you have to lose?”  
“Whatever,” said Thundercracker, not interested in any hocus-pocus but even less interested in an argument. “Just no paint bombs.”  
Novalight began to warn Skywarp about detachment then, and Skywarp to tell her about what a doctor was like. Thundercracker stopped listening in a hurry. Only when the restaurant began to fill for the dinner rush and the waiter to wipe down the tables nearby aggressively did Thundercracker poked Skywarp. “Time to go, Sparky.”  
Skywarp, in the middle of a story about Hot Rod, pouted at him. “C’mon TC,” he said. “I don’t wanna.”  
“I need to go home and prepare dinner.” Novalight stood up. “It was nice meeting you, Thundercracker.”  
“It was good to meet you too,” he said. “I’ll go pay while you two say goodbye.” He paid for their rounds, and for Novalight’s, and since they had sat at the table for so long, he tipped double and more. Novalight was gone when he went back, Skywarp leaning against the table heavily.  
Thundercracker offered him an arm to lean on as they made their way to the taxi stand. Even with three cubes in him, Skywarp was in no shape to fly. “Did that go as well as you hoped?”  
“Better,” Skywarp said. “Can I see her again?”  
“Of course.” Thundercracker shook his head. “Why wouldn’t you?”  
“You don’t mind, really?” It was a little sad how Skywarp’s face lit up like that, and not cute at all.  
“Skywarp. Idiot. What else am I supposed to be doing aside from hauling your heavy aft around?”  
Skywarp shrugged. “If you don’t mind.”  
Thundercracker sighed, and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Skywarp, as Starscream frequently reminded him, did enough things to be a pain in the neck that he could be given a pass on what he couldn’t help. And then Starscream gave him a list of things Skywarp couldn’t help. “I don’t mind,” he said. “In fact, the more you see her, the more I get out of the house. Now let’s go home and see if Starscream wants to watch a movie.”

* * *

  
Ambulon appreciated how Skywarp was always early to his appointments. The medic didn’t have any other patients, not when he was stuck in legal limbo. Ultra Magnus was waiting until all the vrefi were born and rogimed before he finalized the charges, and Skywarp was the last one still carrying. If he died, or any of the avegi didn’t boot up once they detached, Ultra Magnus wanted to add those murder charges as well.  
Not that Skywarp was officially Ambulon’s patient; he was Ratchet’s, with First Aid consulting as an expert on high-risk forging. Ambulon was there at Skywarp’s request, and he had a feeling that it was strictly off the record. But it gave him something to do, the check-ins every deca-cycle ticking down the time left until he stood trial for what he let happen. And Ultra Magnus was making sure Ambulon would be able to see this through.  
Skywarp was going to die. There were no two ways around it; nobody in recorded history had split their spark seven times at once and survived. The vrefi might live, might, if everything went perfectly –the other mech rescued from Jhiaxus who hadn’t terminated his embers had ended up with five viable avegi.  
That mech hadn’t survived the birth. Skywarp wouldn’t either.  
It was obvious, in Ratchet’s kindness and First Aid’s quietness, in Thundercracker’s gentleness and Megatron’s absence. It was obvious in the cracks running through Skywarp’s toes from too much walking, the loose plates on his back where protoform was receding, flowing in to cradle his spark. It was obvious, and nobody mentioned it, as if silence would prevent it from happening. If they hoped enough, prayed hard enough, thought enough happy thoughts, Skywarp would live against all odds, logic, laws of the universe.  
Ambulon hated the idea. It was too close to how he was raised, to the dark side of the unchanged. The idea that if –no, when- Skywarp died, it would be because someone hadn’t been pure enough of spark, hadn’t wanted it enough. The idea that bad things only happened to mechs who deserved it.  
But he wouldn’t say anything. Not because he was a coward, but because he wasn’t cruel enough. Everyone knew, but nobody mentioned it because not everyone knew. Skywarp thought he could do this. Skywarp thought that if everything went perfectly, if nobody made a mistake, then he would be okay, would hold his avegi as they rogimed into tiny, perfect maridi. Skywarp had faith in Primus, yes, more than Ambulon himself, but he also had a deep, unshakable faith in science. He believed, with an almost charming naivety, that Ratchet could fix anything.  
“Doctors are awesome,” he had told Ambulon once, when Ambulon had reattached the plates on the back of his hand and given him some oxy-ferrous for the pain. He’d been a little out of it in Jhiaxus’ lab, in that twilight realm of utter unconscious honesty. “Doctor’s don’t care I’m an abomination and an apostate.”  
Skywarp was doing his part. He drank the energon they prescribed for him, stayed well within the limits Ratchet had set. He didn’t complain, came to every appointment. Came early, even.  
That had more to do with Thundercracker, though. The blue Seeker may have been half-bodyguard to Jhiaxus’ former subject, but he was also half-nursemaid. Not that Ambulon had ever heard a word of complaint out of the soldier, who moved Skywarp through the final deca-cycles with brisk military efficiency. Skywarp chatted easily about the preparations they had made for seven tekni, the video games they had beaten in their last days of freedom. And around the edges of his words Ambulon saw how Thundercracker planned for every contingency, everything from seven cold avegi to Skywarp collapsing on the subway.  
Skywarp hadn’t been able to fly for a long time now.  
But they were always early, and they were early now, Skywarp smiling as he lifted himself up on the medberth. He leaned forward and clasped his hands around his knees. “I got a timing belt,” he announced. “From my nosokos.”  
“A what?” Ratchet asked as he plugged the leads into the port Skywarp offered.  
“A timing belt,” Skywarp repeated, producing the hardware from his cockpit. “It, um, it’s how you don’t die. Ambulon, help?”  
“It’s not a belt,” Ambulon said, taking it from Skywarp. “This end goes into the spark casing and the other end picks up the ember’s rate of spin. Then it speeds up or slows down the pedio spark to the same rate.”  
“Well, that sounds dangerous and borderline suicidal.” Ratchet said, not looking up from the scanner. His face was almost entirely blank, with the faint rise of optic ridges that meant the numbers were better than expected, and fainter frown that said they were still too low for hope.  
Thundercracker, leaning against the wall and out of the way, folded his arms. The light flashing off his arm-mounted rifles caught Ambulon’s optic, and Ratchet’s too. Skywarp tilted his head. “But everyone uses them.”  
“Have you ever seen a spark spin so fast it collapses?” Ratchet asked, coiling the scanner’s leads.  
“It shrinks the splines, helps them reticulate faster,” Ambulon said. “I’ve used them before. With some modifications, it might be useful here …Skywarp, can we borrow this?”  
“Sure!” Skywarp chirped as he laid back to let Ratchet scan the embers. “Don’t lose it, I promised Novalight I’d give it back.” Above him Ratchet made a noise, slightly unhappy, very annoyed. Skywarp yawned, his systems stuttering in exhaustion. “If you’re going to be doing that counting thing, I’m just gonna take a nap,” he said. “Slipstream’s coming over later for,” he trailed off as he slipped into recharge, exhausted from the simple trip over.  
Ambulon turned the timing belt over in his hands. It wouldn’t take much to double Skywarp’s odds of survival, and Ambulon did have a lot of free time these days. Perhaps he could borrow some books from Ratchet. Perhaps First Aid would have some ideas.  
Perhaps, Skywarp had a chance.

* * *

  
“Tomorrow is the big day,” Megatron said, sitting on the edge of the bed where Skywarp lay.  
“Yeah,” Skywarp said, lifting one shoulder in a half shrug, optics dim. “I can’t wait to meet them.”  
“Have you everything ready?” Megatron remembered the deca-cycles of preparation before Hot Rod and Galvatron had been born, and the frantic dash afterwards for everything they had forgotten.  
“Starscream says yes.” Skywarp grinned. “He ordered so much stuff off the cortext. I tried telling him that at first all we’ll really need is cradles and bottles and sparangi, but what do I know?” He paused, and Megatron took his hand. “I only helped my nosokos with her first one. I only have five adelfi. I only put together ten boxes at least for my family.”  
“Surely your embers deserve more than the bare minimum.”  
“Yeah, I know,” Skywarp’s optics shuttered entirely. The embers drained so much from him, the doctors feared to let him carry beyond tomorrow. But they were so small still, and the connection would be strong, the wounds from their removal terrible. Megatron had never known any birth so close save his nosokos’ twins, and that had been as textbook perfect as all Primes. “It’s just so different from what I’m used to.”  
“Look at me,” Megatron ordered, cupping the side of Skywarp’s face. “You will be an excellent trefos.” He didn’t know what else to say, so he poured all his conviction into that one sentence Skywarp didn’t say anything in return, but he did reach up and lay his hand over Megatron’s. “You should rest while you can,” Megatron continued, half out of true concern for his pallakos.  
“When do you have to go?”  
Megatron hesitated. “I will still be here when you wake,” he lied. He lay down next to the Seeker, like they used to, long ago.

* * *

  
Starscream didn’t look up when Thundercracker dropped to his knees in front of him and laid his head in his lap. He kept reading the report on the Rock Lords’ latest movement until Thundercracker lifted a hand, burning with suppressed emotion, to trace the swirl of a tattoo on Starscream’s thigh. Only when Thundercracker sighed and turned his head, resting it on Starscream’s knee instead of hiding, did Starscream put aside the datapad and reach for a blue wing.  
Thundercracker sighed again as Starscream stroked down the edge. “Turn around,” Starscream ordered, voice low, and Thundercracker obeyed without question. He was so tense he was vibrating, and Starscream couldn’t blame him, exactly, but something was going to snap if he didn’t relax.  
Starscream set to work without a word, soothing the tension from Thundercracker’s wings until Thundercracker slumped back against his legs. “Skywarp recharging?” Starscream asked, moving to Thundercracker’s neck. The cables there were wound tight, and Starscream worked his fingers under plating to ease some slack in.  
“Yes.” Thundercracker let his head fall back and shuttered his optics. “Went down easily enough.”  
“Will he stay down?” Starscream stroked down to Thundercracker’s shoulders, as far as he could reach with war-class armor protecting the delicate joints in his way.  
“He’s tired.” Thundercracker shrugged and leaned forward, balancing on the balls of his feet and giving Starscream more access to his back. The plating was designed to withstand laserfire and acid pellets and Thundercracker’s own sonic weaponry. There wasn’t much Starscream could do, but he did what he could, and then simply stroked his palms over the broad planes of his much more sensitive wings. “He’s real tired,” Thundercracker repeated, slowly.  
“That’ll change after tomorrow,” Starscream said, concentrating on following each tiny scratch in the finish. He really should break out the wax, but it was all the way in the washroom, and he wasn’t about to leave Thundercracker to get it. He might need to make a detour under the shower. “Less of a drain on his spark.”  
“If he has one, after tomorrow.” Thundercracker’s voice was bitter, bitter and rumbling like ungreased gears. But it was Thundercracker’s voice and he loved hearing it. That meant Thundercracker was here, within earshot, and coherent, and most importantly alive.  
“He will,” Starscream said, reassuring himself just as much. “You’re the one that keeps telling me how strong he is.”  
Thundercracker shrugged, his wings flexing under Starscream’s hands. “What’s it you always say? The laws of physics are immutable?”  
“Sparks don’t always play by the rules.”  
“Wouldn’t put money on him seeing the next dawn.” Thundercracker slumped back against Starscream’s legs.  
“And when is that, exactly?”  
“Figure of speech.”  
Starscream slid his hands forward, finding Thundercracker’s chest. “There’ll be avegi for us to take care of.”  
Thundercracker tipped his head back into Starscream’s lap, eyes dark. “It’s too early. They’re all going to die. How can you believe otherwise?”  
“Simple.” Starscream joined him on the floor, pulling him into his lap. “We have done everything possible, prepared for every eventuality. Science will save them.”  
“And when we recycle our adelfos and his mori?” Thundercracker asked, voice heavy with old pain. He’d been at too many vrefos funerals, Starscream knew, before they met.  
Starscream didn’t say anything. He’d done what he could to save Skywarp, and what Thundercracker needed right now was silent company. And Thundercracker needed to be okay the next day, so he could sit with a recovering Skywarp while Starscream tended the avegi.  
Until then, he’d let Thundercracker lean on him as much as he needed.


	7. ζʹ

The second to the last thing Skywarp did before going back was hug Thundercracker and get the back of his head slapped by Starscream, as they both sternly instructed him to not die, under any circumstances.  
The third to the last thing Skywarp did before going back was bow his head and allow Slipstream to bless him in the name of Cybertron and the All Spark.  
The last thing, the very last thing Skywarp did before following First Aid past the sliding door, grey as death, was kiss Megatron. Or, more accurately, be kissed by Megatron, the Lord High Protector engulfing him in his arms and kissing the Seeker as if they were alone, the last two mechs on the planet. Kissing Skywarp as if they’d die if he let go.  
But they had to part, and Megatron’s eyes followed black wings hungrily before he sat next to his nosokos on the thinly-padded bench. Thundercracker wondered, as he followed his sieziegos to another one, if Megatron would be so desperate if he had bothered to stop by and visit his pallakos at some point. Had Skywarp seen him since he’d collapsed on television? Thundercracker didn’t think so. He hadn’t seen Megatron himself, and he’d been within shouting distance of Skywarp since.  
Slipstream left, with a quiet nod to Starscream, unable to stay for a moment more. She’d promised to come back, to dedicate the avegi to Primus. A little early, but if the newsparks didn’t make it, they’d at least be recognized by the god-planet. If one believed in that sort of thing, which Thundercracker didn’t. Skywarp did, and it gave him a measure of peace to know it would happen.  
Thundercracker sat next to Starscream, in the hard chairs against the wall. The Prime had his optics off and his hands folded, the Lord High Protector was tapping his fingers on his knee. Starscream took out a datapad and a stylus, poking at it in the deceptively leisurely way he did when he was dealing with matters of life and death. He was the Minister of War, it happened on occasion, and he took that much of his job seriously. Thundercracker, veteran of the disastrous Umizoomi campaign, appreciated that more than words could say.  
There was a vidscreen in the corner, playing an old movie. Thundercracker didn’t recognize it, though the actors all had the pauldrons and optic-searing colors popular in his college days. It was a space opera, or possibly a romantic comedy set on a space station, neither being nearly interesting enough to hold his attention. Maybe he’d play Mineral Madness. How long would this take, anyways?  
Thundercracker sighed inwardly, and leaned against Starscream. His sieziegos shifted, just enough for their wings to overlap. Thundercracker remembered hearing that a manual detachment took forty kliks, but that was when he was young, and for a single spark. Skywarp had seven.  
At least he couldn’t hear the clicks and whirls and burrs he’d never been able to put names to. There had been a time when Thundercracker had been separated from the medbay by only a privacy tarp, when he never knew which one of the thousand mechs under his command was in the tender mercies of the medics. No, Thundercracker didn’t know the names of the machines that beeped and groaned, he didn’t know the meanings of the long medical terms, but he knew too well what good sounded like, and the sounds of Mortilus. He’d thought back then, on the dry dusty plain, that he would give anything to move the medbay out of earshot.  
Now, several rooms too many away from Skywarp, unable to hear even Ratchet’s cursing, Thundercracker wished for the privacy tarp and its token nod to dignity that meant nothing.  
Prime sat, still as a statue. Megatron had moved to tapping impatiently on his adelfos’ knee, though Optimus took no notice. Starscream read intently, the end of the stylus in his mouth. Nobody looked ready for a game of cards. On the television, the main character, in an optic-shredding shade of blue, was insulting some new recruits in the angry, personally offended tone true archisminii used. Definitely a space opera, and one closer to reality than most. The pezhetairi were a family, whose membership was earned. It was a archisminios’ job to weed out the weak and unfit. When mech’s lives depended on each other, there was no room for coddling feelings, no room for certain weaknesses.  
And it was a archisminios’ job to make sure the mechs left his training prepared for anything. A mech that couldn’t shoot straight while being yelled at would hardly keep his emotional subroutines in check while being shot at. A mech who let his fear control his target lock got his unit killed.  
Archisminii may have been the most hated mechs in the pezhetairi –Thundercracker, personally, would have just as soon shot Windcharger as bought him a drink- but they loved the pezhetairi more than any other mechs enlisted. Thundercracker himself had gone to college intending to become one; it didn’t matter what one’s degree was in, but a archisminii needed one.  
But then he’d met Starscream, the only other Seeker in the weed-out history of art class, and the rest was history.  
The door opened, and Ambulon walked in. Everyone looked at him, and he shifted uncomfortably under the gaze of Skywarp’s adelfi and pallakos. Under the optics of the Minister of War, the Lord High Protector, the Prime himself. The only one he could bear to look at was Thundercracker. “We have him under and the timing belt attached,” the doctor said. “Everything looks good so far, and I’ll keep you updated periodically. Ratchet expects this to take about three to four cycles.”  
Thundercracker nodded at him, and Ambulon went back to the surgery. Megatron rumbled, but Optimus wrapped his fingers around his twin’s. They had the same color hands. Thundercracker had never noticed that before. Starscream returned to his datapad. Optimus returned to his silent contemplation of the inside of his optical shutters, not releasing Megatron. Megatron turned his attention to the screen, where a mech was about to wash out by eating his own sidearm.  
Thundercracker recognized this movie after all. He didn’t need to watch the rest of it. He’d lived it.  
“Do you want to play canasta?” he asked Starscream, quietly, desperately. Starscream, quick as a thought, switched his datapad over to a canasta board. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said, dealing the holocards.  
They didn’t invite the other two to play. Optimus Prime never gambled, not even for gummis, and Megatron took such games far too seriously. Any other day, Starscream would be goading him to play and gloating over his wins, but now they were far too distracted to offer a proper challenge, and Thundercracker guessed Starscream didn’t want to listen to Megatron later. It was possibly the most pathetic game they’d ever played, either of them. If Skywarp was there, they’d be able to play youchre, but if Skywarp could play, they wouldn’t be playing cards in the waiting room in the first place.  
The piles of gummis were still fairly even when the door opened again. Thundercracker set his hand down –it was trash, slag, and more trash- and gave Ambulon his full attention. “The first avegos has been successfully detached,” he reported. “Skywarp’s spark is a little fast but holding steady, and the other avegi haven’t decided if they’re going to stay in or not. We’ll close him as soon as they make up their minds.”  
“I thought Ratchet said three cycles,” Thundercracker pointed out. It had barely been one.  
“Ratchet doesn’t think they’ll stay,” Ambulon said, then offered Thundercracker a half-fake smile. “And Ratchet didn’t expect the timing belt to have an effect. It’s, well, have you any medical training?”  
Nobody answered him, but then again, as far as Thundercracker knew, nobody did. “The magical plumbob is working its magic?” Starscream said, sarcasm not as thick as usual.  
“The timing belt is making a difference,” Ambulon said, defensiveness making him bold. “If you have several cycles later, I can explain how, but I’m still needed in there.”  
“How much longer until we can see him?” Megatron growled.  
“That I can’t tell you,” Ambulon left, though it was really more of a retreat.  
Megatron shook off Optimus Prime’s hand. “I cannot wait,” he said. “Matters demand my attention.”  
“You can’t leave,” Starscream said. “What could be more important?”  
“GT-161, for one,” Megatron said. Thundercracker didn’t recognize the name, but Starscream did. His sieziegos repressed his reaction, looking at Megatron too blankly. “Someone alert me when Skywarp is awake.”  
“Or you could stay here, with him.”  
“I will return when he is aware, and in the meantime clear my schedule so that I will not neglect my duties to my people.” Megatron made it halfway across the room before Starscream managed to stand in front of him, barring his path with nothing more than the force of his personality.  
“If you leave, don’t bother coming back,” Starscream snarled, and Thundercracker’s spark swelled even as he thought Starscream was being unfair. This wasn’t a perfect world, and the Lord High Protector didn’t have the luxury other mechs did, even when his pallakos may be dying. But Skywarp deserved someone to stay at his side.  
And it wasn’t that Thundercracker minded, exactly. He loved Skywarp like the adelfos he’d never had, the adelfos his trefos had died trying to give him. But Thundercracker was pledged to Starscream first, since long before he’d met the teleporter. Skywarp deserved to be first in someone’s life.  
“Starscream,” Prime said, coming between them with his quiet dignity. “That is not fair. Skywarp would understand, would he not?”  
Starscream didn’t quite stamp his foot, but Thundercracker saw it twitch. “He understands that Megatron will always put him second.”  
“I am useless here!” Megatron pushed Starscream, not roughly, out of his way. “I will return when it matters.”  
Thundercracker jumped up when Megatron raised his hands, and though Starscream didn’t need help he set his hands on his sieziegos’ shoulders. “It matters now,” he said, just loud enough for the Lord High Protector to hear, but Megatron continued out with only the tiniest pause.  
Starscream flung himself on the now-empty bench, pulling Thundercracker almost into his lap. “You’re staying and he is not,” he snorted to Prime.  
Prime seated himself across from them. “I can stay for a few more hours,” he said. “Will Novalight be joining us?”  
Thundercracker felt every cable in Starscream’s body tense, felt his handsome face twist into a sneer. “Novalight risks losing her nipii every time she sneaks off to see her nosokos,” Starscream said. “What would you think risking Hot Rod worth?”  
“She could fight for them,” Prime pointed out. “I am willing to help her, or anyone in her situation, but I cannot fight her battles for her.”  
“Forgive me for trusting her perspective on the situation over yours,” Starscream seethed.  
“I respect her choice.” Prime was calm, serene with the certainty of someone who’d never met a problem money couldn’t solve. Starscream was almost the same way; his genei had made sure he had more than enough money to throw at whatever turbulence life threw him, but he listened to other people. All the money in the world couldn’t give Thundercracker’s trefos another ember, and both he and Skywarp knew firsthand the cold frustrating depression of not having enough money. Prime was generous to a fault, and didn’t presume to preach when he disagreed with someone’s choice…but he didn’t always understand why a mech would make a particular one.  
Starscream didn’t respond, taking out his datapad again, one arm hooked around Thundercracker’s elbow again. Thundercracker leaned back against him and watched the end of the movie, waiting for Ambulon to return.  
He knew there was something wrong, his situational awareness chip throwing alert after alert at him. Rather than chase down the tiny breezes, he focused on the next movie to play and let his chip work its subroutines. With his conscious awareness entirely on his optics and primary audials, that left his other senses free for the chip to pick through. The hospital had been designed with civilians in mind, and its walls were no match for the standard soldier upgrades. He didn’t think he was hearing the operation itself, but he could feel urgency thrumming through the floor, mechs rushing and calling for a far-away hall to be cleared, a priority alert flashing across the ether.  
Of course, Thundercracker had no way to know if it was Skywarp setting off all this controlled panic. It could have been anything from an intern slipping on the floor to a thirty-grounder pileup down in the emergency ward. He ruthlessly killed threads of speculation that threatened to fracture his processing and forced himself to pay attention to the movie.  
It was another meditation on the horrors of war, more heavy-handed than the last one, the lines between good and evil cut sharper. Like the first one, it was about unit cohesion, but this time it focused more on different leadership styles, on conflicting values and personality clashes taking priority over the safety of the grunts. That was something Thundercracker had seen far too often, had sent commanders to the brig over far too many times. It was hard, when a mech didn’t care about those he commanded. It was harder when she did, when both captains cared too much to give a mechananometer in compromise. Bodies or sparks, what was more important to keep whole?  
Who had decided this war movie marathon was something that needed to be shown in a waiting room, anyways? Thundercracker looked around for a remote, but there wasn’t one. He was considering the possibility of the video screen having controls on the side when the door opened once more for Ambulon. He was clean, save for a splash of energon on his neck.  
He could have stepped right out of the movie, and Thundercracker’s lines ran cold.  
“Six of the other avegi detached themselves,” he announced. “The seventh could still go either way. Where is the Lord High Protector?”  
“He left,” Thundercracker said, wondering if it hurt Starscream just as much to be gripping so tightly. He squeezed his sieziegos’s hand back with fingers rapidly going numb.  
“Someone should call him,” Ambulon said, the same way he had once recommended Skywarp go play in traffic. It was good, that Ambulon could keep his deadpan demeanor under any circumstances. It would serve him well, as a doctor.  
“He didn’t say if the avegi were okay,” Starscream murmured, as the door closed behind Ambulon.  
“I will contact Megatron,” Prime said, folding his hands.  
“Let’s go get some energon,” Thundercracker said, tugging on Starscream’s hand.  
“He didn’t say if any of them were okay.” Starscream followed Thundercracker out the door, though, still not letting go of his hand. Thundercracker turned off his pain receptors to that entire arm.  
“He didn’t say they weren’t.” There was a dispenser at the end of the hall, shared among several waiting rooms. Two femmes were just leaving it, heading down towards their own private hell. One was cassette-sized, no room for weapons to hide and none visible, with standard civilian grade armor but a head-mounted camera, and Thundercracker automatically tagged her as a possible spy. She could have been hired by Jhiaxus to snatch Skywarp’s avegi, after all. The other one was a grounder, with plenty of room to carry seven avegi and holding three cubes in one hand, the little one’s hand in the other. They didn’t acknowledge the Seekers as they passed, too sunk in their own worry. Thundercracker doubted they even noticed, or would have noticed if the building was on fire.  
Starscream hit the dispenser buttons with more force than strictly necessary. The energon was pale, with an oily sheen that reminded Thundercracker of Skywarp’s special cubes. It was thin, too, and tinged with orange. The consistency came from how it was prefiltered to be processed while a mech was awake, delaying recharge that much longer. The orange, Thundercracker didn’t know of a reason for. In the military, it had always been more of a reddish hue. Starscream handed the first cube to Thundercracker. “You know he put you down to take them,” Starscream said.  
“Yes,” Thundercracker said. “I was there.”  
“You will have seven avegi by the end of the day.”  
Thundercracker shrugged. “I’m okay with that possibility.”  
“It’s not a possibility!” Starscream swung his cube in a wide arc, accidentally spilling half of it on the floor.  
Thundercracker put his hands on Starscream's shoulders, drew him close. “We three always planned on him and the mori living with us for a while, so I could help him with them.”  
Starscream looked up at him, bowed under some heavy weight Thundercracker could feel but not see, something that pinged his radar with a far smaller shadow than its effect on his sieziegos. “Seven avegi, six too early,” he said. “One pedios who split too much.”  
And there it was, finally, in small enough words for Thundercracker to understand. “I have always been very, very good at doing what needs to be done.”  
“I’m trusting you,” Starscream said, then stepped away, with one last lingering caress. “We should go back.”  
When they returned to the room, though, Ratchet was waiting for them. “Thundercracker,” he said. “The seventh avegos isn’t spinning fast enough to come off, it’s slowing down, and Skywarp’s splines can’t reticulate while it’s still attached. You are the avegos’ legal guardian, until it slows down enough to lose cohesion.”  
“Is Skywarp okay?” Thundercracker asked.  
“We can try to save the avegos by reversing the polarity, but honestly that doesn’t have good odds, and if the vrefos survives, he will have severe problems,” Ratchet continued. “Or we can let nature take its course while we try to save Skywarp. You need to choose.”  
Because Skywarp had put Thundercracker down as his medical proxy as well as the avegi’s next of kin. It had seemed like a good idea at the time; as much as Megatron and Starscream tried to be there, only Thundercracker could really be available every minute of every day. He never thought that would lead to this. They had never talked about it. It was too soon, and it was never the time, and they were supposed to have more time.  
Prime was in the corner, face twisted into as dark a frown as Thundercracker had ever seen. Probably arguing with Megatron. Starscream was silent at his side. Thundercracker knew what he would say, though. Save Skywarp.  
But Skywarp had been so excited over his tenki. How could Thundercracker look at him after and tell him that he had told Ratchet to give up the avegos for dead? How could he choose?  
“Time is running out,” Ratchet said. Thundercracker could feel the medic’s readiness, could feel the nanoclicks ticking down in everyone’s head.  
“Save them,” he said, hardly knowing what was coming out of his mouth. “Don’t let either of them die.”  
Ratchet made a noise that Thundercracker didn’t know how to interpret. “The other six have been taken to the nursery,” he said. “Ambulon is with them. You’ll be able to see them soon, once they’ve booted up.”  
And then he was gone.  
  
Starscream hadn’t even begun to process what Ratchet had said before the doctor left. “The splines aren’t reticulating?” he asked.  
“His spark isn’t…where the embers were attached isn’t coming back together.” Thundercracker’s voice was soft, so soft Starscream could barely hear him. Starscream led him to a chair, with his back to the wall and full view of both doors, and sat him down. “That makes it wobble, and slow down. If they can’t weave them back together, it falls apart entirely.”  
“So cut off the last avegos,” Starscream said, then corrected himself to, “Detach it manually.”  
Thundercracker shook his head. “The avegos has to be spinning fast enough, or the spline is just too big and can’t reticulate at all. This is how…”  
He trailed off. Starscream had heard him speak of umizoomis and prisoners of war, of soldiers who’d been driven mad and soldiers who had joined to hurt people. He’d heard his sieziegos speak of horrors Starscream could barely comprehend. He’d once flown to the edge of the warzone to meet up with Thundercracker on an unofficial section eight emergency leave.  
Never had he sounded so terrifyingly hollow, had he felt so fragile under Starscream’s fingers. Only one thing could have affected him this deeply, only once had he been so helpless. “My trefos died when they tore the avegos off.” The words were wrapped around a tenkos’ pain, never mind he’d been almost old enough to enlist then. “It was experimental.” It had still been a room, not much like this one in Vos, where a medic had come to deliver the news, to ask his trefos to make a choice. “It didn’t work.”  
“This isn’t experimental,” Starscream said, a firm hand on Thundercracker’s shoulder, shielding him from Optimus Prime across the room. “They’ve been reversing polarities since we were in school. First Aid is an expert on multiple avegi, Ratchet is an expert on mori, and Ambulon is an expert on keeping Skywarp alive. And Skywarp is very hard to kill.”  
Thundercracker smiled weakly at Starscream. “That he is.”  
Starscream sat down next to him, and the Prime pretended he wasn’t waiting until the two Seekers pulled themselves together to sit across from them. “My nosokos refuses to come until Skywarp awakens,” he said.  
Starscream was tempted, so very tempted to go track down the Lord High Protector, beat him over the head with his own severed foot, and drag him to this hospital for repairs. But Thundercracker’s wingtip was vibrating against his own, and Starscream had made some very specific promises about abandoning his sieziegos alone with the Prime when he wasn’t on guard duty. So he swallowed his righteous anger, and waited.  
They didn’t wait long before the door opened one last time and First Aid came out, followed by Ratchet. First Aid looked far too cheerful, considering. Ratchet just looked tired.  
“Everyone’s doing really good!” First Aid chirped.  
“Nobody’s dead,” Ratchet clarified. “We got the last avegos detached, and Skywarp’s in recovery. All the avegi are in the nursery, and two of them have already booted. You can see the other five as soon as they boot.”  
“You can go hold the two speedy ones now,” First Aid said.  
“And Skywarp?” Starscream asked.  
“Considering he’s lost half his energon and seven-eighths of his spark, amazing,” Ratchet said, and both Seekers flinched. Even Prime winced. “But he has a good rate of spin, he’s been hooked up to an infusion, and the bleeding has stopped.”  
“When can we see him?” Thundercracker asked.  
“Once his spark’s stabilized. It still hasn’t reached an acceptable spin rate.”  
“But it’s climbing,” First Aid added. “Why don’t you go see the avegi, and once they’ve booted up I’m sure he’ll be ready for you!”  
“When will Skywarp be awake?” Optimus asked, voice grave enough to be asking for the next dawn.  
Ratchet looked at Starscream and Thundercracker before he answered. Thundercracker nodded; Prime could be trusted. “That I can’t tell you. I don’t know if what’s left of his spark will be enough to keep him alive, much less bring him online.”  
Prime nodded, then said to the Seekers, “I will not impose on your time any further. If you need anything, anything at all, please call me.”  
“Tell your nosokos,” Starscream made the word sound like a curse, “not to bother showing up.”

* * *

  
There was something comforting about the beeps. Slow and irregular, but each interval shorter than the one before. Perhaps Starscream could figure out if there was a mathematical progression, a steady, predictable rate. Thundercracker's talents lay in a more patient direction.  
Thundercracker could sit by Skywarp’s bedside, see his adelfos lying there limp and near dead. He could wait for Skywarp to stir, for the doctors to come and wake him. Doctors came frequently enough to check the monitors, what few were hooked up. Skywarp’s vitals were so low, the monitors couldn’t measure them. But his spark still spun, and his pump still pumped, and deep in the bottom of his brain still ran the very base processes.  
“He should be dead,” Ratchet had said, as Starscream stood still as death, as Skywarp, and Thundercracker was pulling the too-tight arms off the chair. “His spark has shrunk far too much to support life. But as you can see, he’s refusing to die.” The doctor shook his head. “And whatever numbers are big enough for us to measure are climbing.”  
“What does that mean,” Starscream said tightly, as Thundercracker put a hand on his knee. His very plating was cold.  
“It means that I have no idea if he’s going to die,” Ratchet said. “As long as he’s showing signs of life, we’ll keep him on whatever he needs. Beyond that, everything that can be repaired will be repaired. We can’t grow his spark back for him.”  
Thundercracker stood up. “Will it grow back?”  
Ratchet nodded. “If he doesn’t die. He hasn’t so far, he keeps improving, so I’d put money on it.”  
Starscream muttered something uncomplimentary about Ratchet’s gambling habits. Thundercracker asked, “Is there anything we can do?”  
“Someone should be with the avegi,” Ratchet said. “I’ll let the nurses know visiting hours don’t apply to you.” He left, as easy as that.  
“Now what?” Thundercracker and Starscream asked each other at the same time. Thundercracker wanted to laugh, wanted to hear Starscream’s laugh….but to get what he wanted would be a betrayal. Starscream turned around and leaned against Thundercracker.  
“Now we wait,” he said. Thundercracker could feel the cables tensing and relaxing in his entire body, to the rhythm of the beeps.  
“One of us should go sit with the avegi.” And oh, how Thundercracker didn’t want to go, sit and look at too-small avegi again, watch hope flicker and die.  
“I’ll go in a klik.” Starscream’s fingers were working at Thundercracker’s neck, and he leaned most of his weight in. Thundercracker didn’t mind.  
“Comm. me if anything happens?”  
“Of course.” Starscream withdrew his fingers, pushed Thundercracker away gently, touched his face. Then he was gone.  
And Thundercracker was left alone with Skywarp, with the next best thing to Skywarp’s corpse.


	8. ηʹ

The hospital was cold.  
Starscream paced around the room, the smallest avegos in his cupped hands. Ratchet said the nest was kept to a proper temperature, that was why the room was cold, and it wasn’t that Starscream didn’t trust him, exactly, but.  
The hospital was cold.  
Better too cold than too hot, he supposed, but the white avegos was so very, very tiny, the red and blue stripes nearly invisible. He could barely hold heat in the middle of the pile, and it was impossible to hold an avegos too much unless it overheated, which this one certainly wasn’t in danger of. The avegos should have been nestled next to his pedios, Skywarp’s systems keeping him warm, Skywarp’s fans cooling him off, as he recovered from the ordeal of splitting his spark in twain. There were six avegi left, but all save two were terribly small, Skywarp could have held them easily, especially with Thundercracker and Starscream to spell him in a nest at home, rather than carrying them around in his cockpit.  
But Skywarp, three-fourths of his spark in the nest in front of Starscream and another eighth cradled in his hands, wasn’t coming home any time soon. He wasn’t walking around any time soon. He was too weak still to awaken fully, Thundercracker reported, too weak to care for himself.  
Ratchet was cautiously optimistic that he would live, First Aid more so. Thundercracker spent most of the time at his bedside, suited to the long watches of the night as much as Starscream wasn’t, far more than he was suited to watching over fragile, helpless avegi and waiting for them to grow cold and unfurl into limp corpses. Starscream could do that, Starscream had never done that as a nipios like Thundercracker had, Starscream had never been barred from a room where that was happening like Thundercracker had. Starscream never had to sit outside a door and listen to half his trefos’ spark extinguish and the other half break. Starscream only knew death from the edges, from two steps away. But to watch family lie still, only the beeping machines proving their life, keeping them alive, that he knew all too intimately. He knew watching someone you’d always thought invincible laid low, knew the silent vigil, and knew just how shamefully quick he would flee.  
But that was why they were so good together, Thundercracker and Starscream. Thundercracker was strong in all the places Starscream was weak, Starscream soared where Thundercracker stalled.  
Not like Megatron and Skywarp, though they were happy enough as pallakos, bound only as far as they chose. They talked, and Thundercracker had whispered to Starscream in the night how rare that was even with pallakos, to lay out the boundaries between he and I and he-and-I and we with surveyor’s precision, rather than stumbling over the cliff. Starscream had laughed, and asked Thundercracker if he should fear stumbling over the edge himself, and Thundercracker had given him one of those smiles that were rare for anyone but Starscream, and reminded him he could fly.  
As if summoned by Starscream’s thoughts, Megatron suddenly loomed in the open doorway. Starscream looked at the Lord High Protector, and the Prime shadowing him, and said, “Took you long enough.”  
“Matters of state demanded my attention,” Megatron said, coming in without waiting for an invitation.  
“Right,” Starscream said, looking down at the avegos in his hands. The white plating picked up the color from his hands, almost turning yellow-grey. “You couldn’t spare five minutes until now.”  
“No,” Megatron said, with a regal tip of his head. “I could not.” He crossed over to the artificial nest, followed by Prime.  
“Hello, Minister,” Prime said, painfully formal. “I hope the evening finds you well.”  
Starscream didn’t dignify that ridiculousness with an answer. “Then it’s a blessing,” he spat the word at Megatron, “that Skywarp has hung on long enough to see you one last time.”  
“He was in recharge still,” Prime said, looking at the avegi, one hand hovering over them.  
“Yes, yes, you can pick one up,” Starscream told him. “Don’t drop it.”  
“I was told there were six unbroken ones,” Megatron said. “Here are only five.”  
“Congratulations, you’ve learned to count,” Starscream said. The last avegos, the one that had almost killed Skywarp the most, had never booted up. It had folded open into a grey misshapen form that would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. Ratchet had said, very quietly, that it wasn’t a result of the reversed polarity, that it had been doomed from the moment it kindled. Then he had left Starscream and Thundercracker with the six avegi left. Thundercracker hadn’t stayed long before Starscream kicked him out to go sit with Skywarp, still at the very edge of death.  
Prime carefully lifted the largest avegos, pale blue banded with silver. He cradled it against his chest, examining the tiny seams just starting to separate in anticipation of rogiming. “Do you know when they will transform?”  
“Soon,” Starscream said, rubbing his thumb along the center seam of the avgos he held. First Aid thought that at least three of them would be flight frames, based on the pattern of the seams, and possibly even all six. Ambulon had said the first batch was all flight frames, but their donors were different. “When they are ready, but they show signs.”  
“Where is the sixth avegos?” Megatron demanded. “Did you lose one already?”  
“It’s right here,” Starscream said, allowing some of the avegos’ shine to peek through his fingers.  
“Hmph,” Megatron reached out with a single finger, brushing the red one. “Your partner” –he made the word sound like a curse, “wouldn’t tell us Skywarp’s prognosis.”  
“That’s because it’s none of your business.” Starscream set the tiny avgos down next to its large black adelfos and snatched up the red one. He had to rotate which avegos he was holding. It was better for them to be held, and held often, Ratchet said.  
“I’d say I have the right to a little,” Megatron began, but Starscream cut him off.  
“No, here you have no right.”  
“I have all the rights he granted me”  
“I don’t remember medical proxy being on the list. That’s my job. And Thundercracker’s. You’re about,” Starscream paused, wiggling his fingers as he counted, “eighth in line.”  
Megatron growled. “Tell me.”  
“No.” Starscream held his ground.  
They were interrupted by the sound of a conversion sequence in the Prime’s hands. Starscream set the avegos he was holding down, whirled about battlefield quick, and hit the call button hard enough to crack the plastic, summoning Ratchet.  
“Something’s wrong,” Prime said. “He’s bleeding.”  
Starscream only dimly registered Prime’s words, snatching up the smallest avegos as the seams darkened and began to split. All avegi in the same room always rogimed at once, triggered by the sound of the first transformation. The smallest avegos would need assistance, he was sure of it, not with the transformation but afterwards.  
Ambulon rushed in, followed by First Aid, two mechs who Starscream was uncomfortably familiar with the sound of their footsteps. The rescued ward manager went to Optimus, who had energon dripping from between his fingers. First Aid paused in front of Starscream. “Hold your fingers flat, please,” he instructed. “Even after he’s done, until one of us comes to check him out. Do not help him.” Then the nurse went to the other avegi in the nest.  
Starscream had never seen a rogiming before. The avgos was so tiny, it seemed impossible a mech, even a maridos, even a microbot, could fit in it. Unlike the lightning fast, near ultrasonic beep of a small mech’s normal transformation, a rogiming’s tones were slow and irregular, as gears whirred into motion for the first time. The largest crack described a three-quarters arc, cutting through the stripes, and as Starscream watched the entire panel lifted up and flared out.  
Behind him, he heard Ratchet come in, he heard someone shouting about reattachment. He heard Ambulon ordered to check on the others. He heard First Aid say a third one had began to unfold.  
The next panel to fold out was a leg, silvery-white. A second one followed, kicking furiously. Mindful of what Ratchet was shouting, and First Aid’s instructions, Starscream didn’t help him –not until he saw the black line running up the underside. He carefully tipped his hands, letting the avegos roll over without dropping it. An arm rose from the avgos, tiny hand clenched in a fighter’s fist, and then fell.  
But the plating stayed bright, and he could detect the faintest hum of new systems under the clatter of First Aid pulling over an isolette, of Megatron being roughly ordered out of the way. The legs still twitched, and Starscream didn’t dare move, not when the moros might be just resting.  
He ignored the reports of one born safely, of a second needing resuscitation now. He ignored the way Prime sat down, hands moving to cradle the pieces against his chest, and the hand Ratchet clapped on his shoulder before rushing to check on the other ones. Starscream ignored how the second was pronounced stable but critical, and the third rogimed cherry-red.  
The tiny legs stirred, and a nosecone folded out easily. He was a flyer, then, and the second wing and arm flopped out, the backstrut uncurled. Finally, the head rolled up against the nosecone, and the vrefos stared at him with dark eyes. Starscream waited for the optics to light up, but they didn’t, even as the tiny mouth opened and closed. A thin angry wail rose, too small to be heard by anyone even three steps away, drowned out by Ratchet calling his name.  
“Watch this!” the old doctor said, “you’ll not see it again for centuries.”  
There was only one avegos left in the nest, blacker lines against black plating, and as Starscream watched, two black wings rose together. Then two arms spread, two feet found purchase on the padded surface, and two tiny heads were thrown back as the twins separated. Their spark flashed as it split, gold and silver, steel-grey and rust red, and they lay side-by-side, tiny fans clicking.  
Starscream cycled air through his systems, manually relaxing cables held tight enough to snap. In his hands, the maridos had fallen silent and still, only the slightest buzz reassuring Starscream he was alive. “Let’s get moving,” Ratchet said, rubbing his hands together. “You two check them out and load them up.” The other three were in isolettes already, tiny cables coming out of the access ports in the middle of their faces, feeding tubes in their mouths. Ratchet turned to Starscream. “How’s this one doing?”  
“He’s alive,” Starscream said, letting the doctor lift the moros with careful hands.  
“Did his optics light up at all?” Starscream shook his head. “I’ll check that out. Go find your better half and tell him you now have four healthy tekni.”  
“I see six,” Starscream said. The medics were moving around Prime, Megatron sitting next to him.  
Ratchet set the littlest down in the isolette and unwound the cables. They were a different color than four of the others. “Four healthy ones.”  
“And the other two?”  
“Don’t be gone too long.”  
Starscream walked out of the room almost without noticing it. Four healthy ones was four more than he’d expected. The floors of the hospital were shiny, the hallway crowded with mechs that had no idea a vrefos had just died, and two more teetered on the edge of the Well. A one-armed nipio smiled at him in the elevator, and Starscream found it obscene. He scowled at the grounder, who made a rude gesture at him, but fled on the very next level.  
Skywarp was up two more floors, in a quiet room across from the nurses’ station. The room was as close to dark as it could get, monitors glowing and light leaking around the curtains. It was silent when Starscream walked in, Skywarp asleep on the bed –of course- and Thundercracker…  
Thundercracker had commandeered a recliner from somewhere and pulled the arms off, swearing he could reattach them. Starscream had several pieces of furniture at home that bore testament to his utter lack of construction ability, but he couldn’t really care. Now Thundercracker was lying on it, dead to the world, a magazine over his face and a half-empty cube on the floor next to his hand.  
As silently as he could manage, Starscream crossed the room and picked up the cube. He set it and the magazine on the table. In the orange light of the monitors, Thundercracker was frowning, sunk too deeply in recharge to even notice Starscream touching him. Starscream sighed, and brushed his hand over blue wings and black, and went home.  
He had a moros' worth of stuff to remove from the house.

* * *

  
“His consciousness is fully on-line,” Ratchet said.  
Thundercracker didn’t say anything, sitting in his chair next to Skywarp’s bed, his hand on Skywarp’s arm. He could hear Skywarp’s systems, whirring quietly in normal recharge. They shouldn’t be, Skywarp should be cold and grey like the mori, like his trefos, but somehow, somehow, he’d survived.  
“When he wakes, you should tell him about his tenki.”  
“I should have told you to save him,” Thundercracker said after a breem.  
Ratchet looked up from the monitors, meeting Thundercracker’s gaze for the first time. “What do you mean?”  
“When you were going to reverse the polarity.”  
Ratchet was quiet for a klik. “We were never not going to do everything for Skywarp,” he said, turning back to the monitor. “I asked if you wanted us to try to save that one’s life. Some people would say it wasn’t worth living.”  
“Skywarp would think any living nipio was worth it.”  
“Then you chose right.” Ratchet put the datapad back at the foot of the bed. “We did everything we could for both of them. All of them.”  
Thundercracker didn’t say anything, though he felt a little better. The moros was still dead, Skywarp still might die, the others still might die. But there was nothing more that could have been done, it was nobody’s fault. He sighed inwardly. They’d done all they could. That still might not be enough.  
The doctor put a hand on his shoulder as he left. Skywarp stayed in his twilight recharge, unaware that he had six living tenki, unaware that two had died. He didn't even know about the surprise one, the large avegos that had been fragile twins. Sharing a spark until they rogimed, the split had gone as well as anyone could expect -but now they lay in the NICU, not enough protoform to protect their fragile sparks.  
Still, it was amazing that Skywarp's systems had built the tiny bodies, self-repair nanities commandeered by his foundry to build spark casings and avegi and optics out of individual atoms. And, if Ratchet was right, Skywarp's system had taken instruction perfectly from the foreign code whirling in the sparks, that code corruption was responsible for two of their deaths. Something to lay squarely at Jhiaxus' feet, and how he could be running about free was a travesty Thundercracker didn't want to contemplate.  
But even now, tiny nanites were building tiny circuit boards and synovial reservoirs, taking in sensory input and writing new lines. By the time Ratchet let them go, they'd be no more helpless than any other maridi; utterly dependent on an adult for raw material and energon and for systems that hadn't initialized in their tiny bodies yet. But everything was written in their code already, the mori and their enkyi, and all Thundercracker or Skywarp or Starscream would have to do was plug them into a cockpit and nurse them.  
Thundercracker looked up when the door opened. Starscream came in, came straight to his sieziegos, and Thundercracker barely had time to stand before he had an armful of shaking Starscream. "What's wrong?"  
"We lost another one," Starscream said, pulling himself together. "Too small, not enough protoform to insulate him."  
Thundercracker swore, helplessly, and kissed the top of Starscream's head, because he didn't know what else to do. Starscream clung to him for a minute and more, until the beeping behind them sped up, and Skywarp awoke.  
He mumbled something unintelligible. Starscream gave Thundercracker's hand one last squeeze and went to his friend. "Finally," he said, but there was no heat behind it.  
"Hey," Skywarp croaked. "Ugh. I feel like I got shot. Are the mori okay?"  
"One of them turned out to be spark twins," Starscream said.  
"So we have eight?"  
"We have five," Starscream's face was blank, his voice level, his hands steady. Thundercracker loved him.  
“There were seven embers. Seven and one is eight.” Starscream didn’t say anything about Skywarp’s mathematical ability, and that must have tipped the other Seeker off. “What happened to the other three?”  
“Does it matter?” Starscream asked. “They extinguished. The other five nearly extinguished. You nearly extinguished. Does anything else really matter?”  
Skywarp pulled himself up, one hand balled into a fist, but he was still too weak and he fell back, weakly pounding the bed instead of Starscream’s face. “Yes, damn you,” he hissed, striking the bed again. “That’s all there will ever be of those three, of course it matters.”  
Starscream sighed, and sat on the edge of the bed. “One had corrupted code, never booted up. The second’s code had a variation, his systems didn’t connect correctly. The third was just too small.” He helped Skywarp sit up, supported him. “I’m sure the gory details are written down, you can read them later.”  
Skywarp wailed, a terrible sound, three times more terrible than anything Thundercracker had ever heard, and covered his face with his hands.  
“Four of the others look okay. On the small side but okay. Ratchet is keeping them under observation until he’s sure they can suck and swallow. I’ll stay with them, and Thundercracker will stay with you and when Ratchet lets them go, they’ll come here until he lets you go.”  
Such simple words, tiny words everyone said a million times, outlining their uncertain fate. Simple words, tiny words, so Skywarp could understand through his grief, through his confusion. Skywarp nodded, his hands coming down.  
“The smallest one’s optics never onlined,” Starscream added, to keep from drawing it out any longer than necessary. “Ratchet had to hook him up with a direct fuel-line, he can’t swallow yet. But he’s going to be all right, if I have anything to say about it.”  
Skywarp folded over, arms wrapped around himself, head on Starscream’s wing. “What can you do?” he mumbled.  
“Whatever it takes,” Starscream answered. Thundercracker touched Skywarp’s wing.  
Skywarp didn’t move.

* * *

  
Skywarp didn’t want to come out and face reality, but Starscream could be really fraggin’ annoying when he set his mind to it. So he cracked open one optic and demanded in his meanest voice, “What do you want?”  
“Sit up,” Starscream said, tugging on Skywarp’s hands. “Your koros is here.”  
All of Skywarp’s anger and grief folded itself away at those four little words, to be unpacked later. “I thought you said Ratchet had them?” he asked, struggling to sit up. Starscream helped him, and stacked a cushion behind his back for Skywarp to lean against.  
“This one’s healthy enough to be released,” Thundercracker rumbled, coming over with a sparganos-wrapped bundle. He said something else, but all that washed over Skywarp like wind as he set the moros in Skywarp’s arms.  
With trembling fingers, and a little help from Starscream, Skywarp unwrapped the sparganos. The moros inside, so tiny, tiniest Skywarp had ever seen alive, yawned and stretched and blinked up at him with eyes as blue as Thundercracker’s armor. Pedio and koro, they stared at each other for a long minute, unmoving.  
The moros was silver, not the grey of death or the naked steel of Megatron, but the pure unalloyed color of delicate platinum wire, with wings of superconductive gold and more than a few plates Prime-red. He looked up at Skywarp with one lip sucked in his mouth, lifting his head for a closer look.  
“Hey buddy,” Skywarp said softly, touching his cheek with a gentle finger. The vrefos’ plating was pliable, soft over protoform like all vrefi, springing back easily like all healthy vrefi. The moros turned his face to follow Skywarp’s finger, tiny gears grinding. “You hungry? Bet you’re hungry if you’re awake.”  
“Don’t look at me,” Skywarp heard Thundercracker say behind him. “Once they rogime, that’s the end of my knowledge.”  
But it was the beginning of Skywarp’s, fourth nipios out of nine, with countless other mori he’d grown up around. He’d never done it personally, but he’d sat next to Novalight with her first otokos as she learned every trick passed down enkyos to otokos to convince a maridos to suckle. Skywarp handed the moros to Starscream, and just as he’d seen Novalight do a thousand times while he held a freshly-greased moros, he uncovered his port and used his fingers to coax out the nozzle. It was far easier than Novalight had lead him to believe, as easy as that evil consultant had said it should be. Starscream handed him back the moros, and once the moros' mouth was latched on to the aperture, he started sucking down fuel in earnest.  
It didn’t hurt, exactly, though it felt weird as all slag, like bleeding from a numb wound. Still, he had a living moros nursing enthusiastically, and even if he was a little small, he would be fine. Skywarp trusted Ratchet, and tiny sick mori were Ratchet’s specialty. If he wasn’t okay, he wouldn’t be here.  
It was a little more draining than Skywarp would have thought, but Novalight wasn’t big on whining and he’d heard enough complaints from the other enkyi that he didn’t think it worth mentioning. Instead, he unfolded the tiny hand laying against his chest and examined the fingers. They were so tiny, so perfectly formed. Not quite as articulated as Ratchet’s, or even Starscream’s, but just as complex as his or Thundercracker’s. Standard Seeker configuration, and Skywarp could see his toes were the same way. His wings didn’t have the complicated flaps needed for flight, and his armor just barely covered everything, but that would all come in time. Right now the moros' world was eating and recharging and learning to walk and grab and talk. Anything more would confuse his tiny processor, overflow his buffer. Those, too, would be upgraded once his spark had grown enough to sustain more complex machinery.  
All too soon, the moros' tank was full, the light on the back of his neck changing from amber to green. He was unwilling to let go, though, and Skywarp slid a finger in his mouth alongside the nozzle. With something to suck on, the vrefos didn’t protest as he was pulled away from the food, optics dim and sated.  
“Is he still hungry?” Thundercracker asked.  
“His tank’s full,” Skywarp said. “See, the fuel light’s green but the defrag light is yellow.”  
Thundercracker nodded. “Do you want me to put him in the cradle?”  
Skywarp stroked the port set between and below the moros' optics. “No, I’ll put him in my cockpit.”  
“He needs to be greased,” Starscream said, coming in from the hallway. When had he left? “And they’re running the final tests on another one. Let Thundercracker take care of him and rest until the other one comes.”  
Skywarp nodded, holding the moros close.  
“I don’t know how to grease a moros,” Thundercracker said, as close to a no as he’d ever give Starscream.  
“It’s about time you learned,” Starscream said briskly. “Hand him over, and drink this.” Skywarp didn’t want to trade the moros for a cube of energon, but he needed to refuel, and it was Starscream rolling his optics and tapping his toes on the floor, Starscream who could be trusted with anything. “You watch and learn. Do you think he’d rather be in Thundercracker’s cockpit or a cradle?”  
Skywarp let Starscream take the moros, the yellow light imploring him to hurry. “Cockpit,” he said. Skywarp would rather have the moros in his own cockpit, or barring that a cradle where he could see him, but in Thundercracker’s cockpit the moros would receive extra nanites, little bits of Seeker code. Would become familiar with Thundercracker’s systems. Skywarp had always known he would have to share the mori with Thundercracker, and he was okay with it, he really was. He just wished it didn’t need to be so soon.  
One of the nurses, Skywarp didn’t recognize beyond not First Aid, came in to show Thundercracker what he was doing. Starscream supervised for a minute, then looked at Skywarp. “Drink the energon,” he ordered. “You need to take care of yourself to take care of them.” He watched as Skywarp drank from the cube, then laid a hand on the teleporter’s knee. “I’m going to go sit with the other ones.”  
Skywarp nodded. “Thank you,” he said quietly.  
Starscream pretended not to hear. “Don’t die,” he said, one last time. “Don’t overdo it. Call for nurses if you need them.” And with one final kiss for Thundercracker, he was gone, to where Skywarp should be, to where Skywarp couldn’t be.  
Thundercracker brought the moros over when they were finished, and Skywarp was finished with his cube and sat in the chair. “Do you want him in your cockpit?” he asked.  
Skywarp did, but Starscream had said, so Skywarp shook his head. “Yours, if you’ll take him.”  
“Of course,” Thundercracker said, smiling down at the vrefos. As if he’d done it a thousand times, he deftly rewrapped the moros in a sparangos for padding and plugged in the port. Skywarp smiled too, to see Thundercracker so comfortable with the moros. He wasn’t doing this alone, he had more help than Novalight ever had. Help that wanted to help, help that would love the nipii as if they were his own. Thundercracker already did. There would be plenty of time to carry this vrefos around in his own cockpit, and another one on the way. It was just as good, to give this gift to Thundercracker, to see it with his mind and memory as clear as it had been in days.

* * *

  
Skywarp slept for a time, and when Thundercracker shook him awake, First Aid was wheeling another moros in. Skywarp didn’t know what time it was or how long he’d been out, but that didn’t really matter. He could see the shadow of the other vrefos in Thundercracker’s cockpit still, the faint blue gleam turned green by amber glass as the moros watched his nosokos. First Aid stopped the cradle in front of Thundercracker’s dismantled chair and turned to the Seeker on the bed.  
Still half-asleep, not even bothering with visual input, Skywarp let First Aid flutter around him and fuss. He was almost used to the routine of vital checks and First Aid’s clucking now. He preferred Ambulon’s cold professionalism, but that had more to do with their history than anything. First Aid always left Skywarp with the feeling he was about to die, or wasting everyone’s time but being indulged for the sake of his tender emotions. Ambulon was blunt, professional, and understood what Skywarp hadn’t grown up knowing without the awkward questions.  
But Ratchet liked First Aid, and it was hard to muster up the energy to growl at the kid. Better to feign recharge until he left with a quiet word to Thundercracker, reporting that Skywarp’s spark was up to fourteen percent strength.  
“You’re not fooling him, you know,” Thundercracker rumbled, sounding amused. Almost normal.  
Skywarp cracked open an optic shutter. “As long as I don’t have to listen to him babble.” He struggled to sit up, and Thundercracker finally had to help him.  
But Thundercracker didn’t say anything, just laid the newcomer in Skywarp’s arms and took away the sparangos.  
Like his nosokos, this new one was tiny, so very tiny. And he was all curves, with wings that were far too rounded to fly, but Skywarp stroked them with a finger anyways. They were important, those wings. When his otoki were upgraded to something that could fly, their processors would be well-used to the input from wings and nosecones and Seekerfeet. The moros' hands and feet were standard Seeker design, copied by Skywarp’s self-repair systems from his own schematics.  
The moros' optics were much bigger though, much more complex, pale blue and already focusing. His vision must be sharp, Skywarp thought, as the nipio stared at him, through him into his very spark. Heavy, too, the moros was, as Skywarp lifted him for a better view.  
“He looks like Megatron, only backwards.”  
“Well, that makes no sense,” Thundercracker said.  
“His colors.” The moros was red, the same fire in Megatron’s optics glinting off his curves, and his face was weapon-grey in its sharp lines. There was white in him too, flatter than his nosokos’ but not less beautiful.  
“You know what he’d be good at,” Thundercracker said thoughtfully, brushing his fingers along the bottom of one delicate foot, that curled away from the stimulus. “All this matte white, he’d be hard to see.”  
“Don’t recruit my tekni for the army,” Skywarp said, pulling the moros away. But he was only teasing, and he smiled at Thundercracker to let him know. Maybe Thundercracker thought about them as much as Skywarp did himself.  
“Hey, it’s what I know,” Thundercracker said, smiling too. “He could save lives as a scout. Or he could show up and make the natives like him, avoiding a war in the first place.”  
“Or he could not join the army.” Skywarp wouldn’t mind if his vrefi enlisted, though. And Thundercracker was such an old soldier; he thought a tour of duty would be the highest honor for their tenki.  
“This one has the makings of a hero in him,” Thundercracker said, catching the vrefos’ attention. “They all do.”  
Skywarp didn’t tell him that they all already were, saving him from Jhiaxus. He didn’t want to think about the scientist, not now with one of his saviors in his arms, not ever.

* * *

  
When the pump timer beeped, Starscream unlatched it from his port with a sigh of relief. His port was mostly numb by now, but the hose was cumbersome. He transferred the tiny moros to his cockpit and unhooked the bottle of precious maridos-grade prefiltered energon, setting it on top of the pump and wheeling them across the room. The bottle went into the climate-controlled storage unit, the hose was rinsed out, and Starscream grabbed a fresh bottle for the next time the vrefos woke.  
So very small he was, unable to eat, that he had a tube inserted directly into his fuel tank. But he needed to learn to suck and swallow before he was let out, minimally. Every time he woke, Starscream tipped energon in him, a mouthful at a time, and though most of it ran down his chin he already grasped the concept a mere day after rogiming.  
Still, he was tiny enough to fit in Starscream’s cupped hands, and swallowing was hard work. He couldn’t manage to stay awake through half a bottle, and he couldn’t suck at all. Nor could he regulate his own temperature, and though there was a cradle in the room, Starscream either held the moros or tucked him in his cockpit.  
His numbers were strong for his size, Ratchet assured him and a quick perusal of the central cortex verified. If someone carried him constantly, he only required the feeding tube apparatus, and once he was off that, he could come home. Starscream was already making arrangements to work from home so he could care for the teknos. Skywarp certainly was in no shape to, and Thundercracker was taking care of the other four plus Skywarp.  
And if he could spare Thundercracker a dying teknos, he would.  
But it wasn’t only temperature regulation the moros needed. Strong for his size the numbers may have been, but they were still low. He was so small, Ratchet didn’t know if there was something wrong with him or if he just needed more time to grow, to compile core code and assimilate protoform mass. That was part of the reason he needed to be plugged in to a person and not a cradle; while they were just fine for normal vrefi, an automated system simply couldn’t help build the framework of a sentient mind, and by plugging him into the same person time after time, it would make a protoform donation that much easier.  
Starscream fully intended to donate some of his protoform. For him, it was a needle as long as his arm and losing no more protoform than he could regenerate in a deca-cycle. For this nipios, this tiny part of Skywarp, this fighter, it could be the difference between life and death. He owed Skywarp that much at least. Owed Thundercracker, who loved the avegi as if they were his own, that much. And even if he had never met those two, he admired this tiny vrefos who clung to him so fiercely.  
Perhaps that would help some of this little one’s problems, if he was ever strong enough for surgery. The only one it wouldn’t was his optics, dark as obsidian over the cable connecting him to Starscream, perfectly formed but utterly blind. Ratchet had taken one look and pronounced them a problem not about to get worse, a problem that could wait until his survival was assured.  
It was assured, if Starscream had anything to say about that

* * *

  
Thundercracker tucked the sparangos around the red avegos. That one insisted on sleeping in alt-mode, and while normally he would be warm enough, Thundercracker hadn’t yet found the climate control in this room to set it above organic preservation. The big one was still asleep in his cradle as well, tiny fists stretched above his head, wrapped in a sparangos of his own, covered with an electric warming sparganos. They should both recharge more than long enough.  
Right on time, Ambulon pushed a cradle through the door. Skywarp pushed himself up. “Oh thank Primus,” he said. “I was afraid I’d be stuck with First Aid for the rest of my life -he’s just creepy cheery, you know- but now that I’ve seen your ugly face again, I can give him proper appreciation.”  
“Isn’t it dangerous to use your entire vocabulary in a single sentence?” Ambulon asked, stopping the cradle in front of Thundercracker.  
“I don’t know, you’re the doctor, you tell me,” Skywarp said. Thundercracker didn’t know if he genuinely didn’t know or if he was just continuing his game with Ambulon.  
Come to think of it, Thundercracker had never heard someone use his entire vocabulary in a single sentence, not even a vrefos. Perhaps it was dangerous? But howso? He shook his head. He needed to get used to operating on little recharge for the next six trimara, not letting it make him silly.  
Ambulon rolled his optics. “You know the drill by now,” he said. “Someone will drop off another cradle, but don’t get too excited. These two don’t like to be alone,” he said to Thundercracker. “This one has double hookups.”  
Thundercracker nodded.  
“If you need anything,” Ambulon continued, “call First Aid.” And then he was gone, without insulting their abilities to take care of the mori or each other. Thundercracker wasn’t too sensitive about that kind of thing, but Skywarp was. He’d deny it until his vocalizer seized, but he was.  
“Let’s see what we have here,” Thundercracker said, carefully disentangling the twins. He lifted one and checked the back of his neck. The vrefos was hungry, but freshly greased, and Thundercracker wrapped him in a sparangos before he handed him to Skywarp.  
“This one was the surprise?” Skywarp said.  
“Yes.” Thundercracker picked the other one up before he could fuss. “They’re both hungry.”  
Skywarp nodded, and cradled the one he was holding against his chest. “Are you going to feed that one?” he asked. “Or give him a bottle?”  
“I’ll feed him.” The bottles were in short supply; vrefi this young could only drink energon run through special filters by an adult’s body. The energon then would be perfectly calibrated for the vrefos’ needs, infused with code-bearing nanites and supplemented by the enkyos’ self-repair. A vrefos was hardy enough, and could survive with only a quarter of his energon optimized for his own systems, but with four of them, it would be close. And that didn’t even touch the issue of supply. Few mechs had extra to donate, and fewer in this city were Seekers. Introducing minibot code, for example, or Sweep, could make the half-Seeker mori very ill, depending on what frametype the other half of the code came from. Not even Ambulon, with his unaltered medical records smuggled out of the lab, knew their sporos. If there weren’t so many of them, it wouldn’t have ever mattered. Skywarp was a Seeker, and that was enough for Thundercracker to safely feed the mori.  
But Thundercracker had never fed a moros before. He’d not even had the equipment installed until after the separation had been scheduled. The small tank nestled next to his cockpit, and the vrefos fit nicely behind his pectoral shield, protected from distractions and most forms of ordinance. He hesitated, and sat down, and retracted the cover of the nozzle.  
The moros latched on immediately, a tiny pinch that was a little painful and a lot reassuring, and Thundercracker activated the first subroutine. Energon dripped slowly into the moros' mouth, and the maridos sucked greedily after a minute, triggering the second subroutine and a steadier flow. There were eight flow rates total, for all stages of development, and few newborns even reached the third.  
And that was that. The vrefos did most of the work once Thundercracker had him in position. He looked at Skywarp. “Is it always this easy?”  
“Nope,” Skywarp said cheerfully. He hadn’t had difficulty with any of them. “This must be a secret outlier benefit. And by the time most enkyi figure it out, the otokos is old enough to want to play and not eat unless he’s screamingly hungry. And then he’s too busy telling you he’s hungry to eat.”  
Thundercracker made a thoughtful noise, looking down at the moros he held. “You know a lot about this.”  
“Novalight’s koros had a stuck gear,” Skywarp said, stroking the curve of a moros wing. “Couldn’t suck too well, and they kept saying it was her fault, that she was nursing wrong. So I’ve forgotten more about nursing than most people ever learn.”  
“Stuck gears are a medical problem,” Thundercracker said. It was a possible complication of early rogiming, something filed away as “Ratchet can fix it, and if that’s the worst thing, we’ll count ourselves lucky.”  
“Yeah,” Skywarp said. “I know. Anyways, I know all the tricks.”  
Thundercracker respected Skywarp’s privacy, and knew the signs. He knew, dimly, that Novalight’s first birth had been difficult, that Skywarp had lived with her for two meta-cycles to help, but none of the details. “You’ll have to teach me then.”  
“We won’t need them.” Skywarp’s voice slipped into the higher register easier for maridi to hear. “They’re big strong mori, yes you are.”  
The twins weren’t big; they were a little smaller than the red one, two thirds the size of the big one. They were strong, though, to be alive and sucking so soon. Identical and the same glossy black as Skywarp, if Thundercracker looked closely he could see the faint red glow of their sparks shining through too-thin protoform. Ratchet wouldn’t have let them out if they were still in danger, though, and once they were plugged into his cockpit, his systems would fortify his energon with his own protomass to pass on to the vrefi along with tiny bits of code to instruct the nanites he was also giving them how to build new systems out of the raw materials he was feeding them. By the time they were weaned, the four vrefi he nursed would have so much of his code in them, it would be impossible to tell who their original sporos had been, and only that Skywarp was their pedios because he was nursing them as well.  
By the time they were weaned, it wouldn’t matter who brought them into the world, only who had cared for them since.

* * *

  
The first time Skywarp left his nipii was for the recycling.  
It was short, for three maridi of course it was short, and the only people there were Skywarp and Optimus Prime. Starscream and Thundercracker could have come, could have left the nipii in the care of the nurses, and it wasn’t that Skywarp didn’t like them enough to invite them. No, he liked them too much. Besides, he didn’t like the idea of his precious mori in the hands of strangers. He was sure they were perfectly competent. But they weren’t family.  
Optimus Prime wasn’t family either, not really, but Megatron had some vague thing and it was better than doing this alone. He’d shown up just in time for Ratchet’s lecture on how Skywarp was not allowed to walk, not allowed out of the chair, and how this was the only event, by shiny Cybertron, that would induce Ratchet to let Skywarp out of the room. The lecture was for Prime’s audios only; Skywarp himself had gotten nothing more than a hand on his shoulder, and an apology from Ratchet. They’d done all they could.  
The medics had done all they knew, brought the weight of six million metacycles’ worth of knowledge to support his vrefi, and Skywarp didn’t need more than his upbringing to know if they hadn’t, he would be recycling at least three more maridi, if not all seven, if not himself as well. The mere thought burned in what was left of his spark, the idea that any mere idea could be worth more than one life, much less five.  
Skywarp had long ago perfected his strategy for surviving maridos recycling. He started at hydrogen and silently recited the chemical properties of each element in turn. Once, that had been forbidden knowledge, taught to him in secret by Starscream. He had repeated them, over and over, committing them to deepest memory, afraid of the consequences if he was caught with it written down. He’d faced enough consequences back then, and in the dark he’d repeat the periodic table to himself, hydrogen and the noble gases, lithium starting the alkaline metals, transition metals and poor metals and metalloids, ten non-metals. Lanthanides and actinides and he was still halfway through the superheavy atoms when the bodies disappeared in a bright flare. A few more minutes of silent meditation, during which Skywarp packed those three back into their little box of grief for later, and Optimus Prime was wheeling him back to his room, apologizing for needing to leave. Thundercracker was helping him back into the bed, and Skywarp was so fragging sick of it and its coarse weave and the way it was just too damn narrow, and then the red one was in his arms sleeping, or maybe the gold one, his vision was going green and black and finally Skywarp couldn’t stay awake any longer, couldn’t wait for his pallakos that wasn’t coming.

* * *

  
Thundercracker had organized the care and feeding of helpless mechs before, of many more than five, in much nastier conditions than downtown Iacon. But before, he’d had help. And the mechs hadn’t been quite so dependent, and they’d been able to go for more than two hours without food, and none of them had drank Thundercracker’s very lifeblood.  
On the other wing, no aliens were trying to kill him, so this time was much, much easier.  
Still, Thundercracker was comparing the supply list and the scheduled supply runs with just as much attention to detail as before. Once they left the hospital, they’d be on their own, and there was sure to be a thousand things Thundercracker had never even considered. Might as well get as much worked out now as he could, while he had help.  
Skywarp was more help than anyone suspected, Thundercracker thought. He managed to feed them fully half the time; bottles if he was online, directly if he was recharging. He Who Was A Pleasant Surprise already had a distinct preference for recharging in a cradle, but the other three went into either cockpit willingly enough –and the simple but crucial step of transferring data from the cradle needed to be scheduled, or it would be dropped from the queue. It would have been much easier to forget if there were two cradles in use, but with one in Skywarp’s cockpit and one in Thundercracker’s own, they could use the double cradle for He Who Was A Pleasant Surprise and the fourth maridos.  
It was distinctly odd to have a mech plugged into his systems, to have a part of himself, however small, diverted. Thundercracker felt like he was thinking someone else’s thoughts, each vrefos with his own mental texture, and Thundercracker half-suspected some long-dormant line of code was keeping panic at bay from the sheer strangeness of it all. He tried not to think about it too much. Nobody else had a problem with otoki borrowing a clock cycle or two, and nothing abnormal was popping up on the scans, so clearly this was how it was supposed to be. Thundercracker could have asked, of course…the same way he could have refused to grease their joints on the grounds that it required sticking his fingers where fingers shouldn’t go on a tenkos.  
He was interrupted in his musing by the sound of Ratchet coming down the hall. Thundercracker had to bend Skywarp’s aileron a few times to get him online; the recycling had exhausted him. But he was awake enough, with He Who Keeps Transforming under his arm in alt-mode and He Who Is Mighty Clingy sitting in his open cockpit, when Ratchet came in.  
“Your other one needs a protoform transfusion,” Ratchet said. Thundercracker appreciated his directness, most of the time. Not this time.  
Skywarp blinked at him. Not sleepily, just regular Skywarp confusion about anything and everything medical. “Okay, I think I have some extra, um…” He trailed off, and Ratchet huffed.  
“Starscream has already agreed to donate the necessary stuff.” Ratchet sounded faintly surprised, and Thundercracker tried not to be offended on his sieziegos’ behalf. Getting mad at the medic was number six on the list of things to never, ever, ever do. Even if it wasn’t you that was the patient. Especially if it wasn’t you that was the patient.  
“Awesome.” Skywarp looked down and disconnected He Who Is Mighty Clingy, checked his elbow to see if he needed more grease.  
Ratchet thrust a datapad under Skywarp’s nose. “I need you to sign this permission form.”  
Skywarp took it curiously. “Why?”  
“Because I need your permission to give him the transfusion,” Ratchet said, slowly.  
“You didn’t need permission for anything else you did to him,” Skywarp pointed out. “To any of them.”  
“Those were lifesaving procedures,” Ratchet said. “They would have died otherwise.”  
Skywarp shifted He Who Is Mighty Clingy. “So he’s not going to die without one?”  
Ratchet folded his arms and snuffed out the Skywarp’s spark of hope. “He will, just not too quickly for you to sign that.”  
“But if you don’t need permission for ‘lifesaving procedures’ why do you need permission for this?” Thundercracker could see, by the tilt of his head and the fisting of his free hand, that Skywarp had hit the point of saturation, was completely overwhelmed by the idea. He’d sit there and argue with Ratchet, or get distracted by a thought, and not get around to the form for days. Something about forms knocked him completely out of the sky, and most of the time there was time to break it down into parts small enough for him to understand, to give him a few days to turn the idea over in his head.  
The little one didn’t have that much time.  
“Can I sign it?” Thundercracker asked. Skywarp threw the datapad at him like it was on fire. Thundercracker scrawled his glyph on it before Ratchet could say anything. “There,” he said. “Signed by a legal guardian.”  
Ratchet frowned, and Skywarp gave him an innocent smile. Thundercracker didn’t know how guiless it was. But Skywarp had named Thundercracker medical proxy for just this reason, and Ratchet knew that, so with a nod, he took the datapad.  
“It will take some time for the machines to warm up,” Ratchet said. “I’ll keep you updated.”  
“How is he doing?” Skywarp dared to ask.   
“Better than you.” Ratchet gave the monitors a significant glance. They were dark and useless in the corner –according to them, Skywarp was dead. He left, and then it was time for another round of greasing the mori and waking them enough to eat.  
Skywarp wore that slightly pained expression he got when he was thinking hard, though and as soon as the mori were settled in cockpit and cradle, Skywarp asked, “What was with the permission slip?”  
“Do you remember when your synovial reservoir ruptured?” Thundercracker asked. “I wasn’t there but Starscream told me about it.”  
“The first time, when he dragged me to the clinic twice?” Skywarp nodded. “What does that have to do with letting my koros die?”  
Thundercracker winced. “I’ll explain. The first time, they let you go without helping you because doctors don’t do anything to you without permission, as long as you can give it. The mori are too small to give permission, so you do it for them.”  
“But Ratchet just said he didn’t need permission to save their lives!”  
“He does if he has the time to get it.” Thundercracker tried not to sigh. “You trust Ratchet, right? Even though he’s a Senator now you think he’s still a good doctor?”  
“Well, yeah,.” Skywarp waved the question off, voice rising. “They really think I would let him die? There’s not a choice there, not like letting my wrist fix itself!”  
“No, no,” Thundercracker said. “The idea here is your son can wait long enough for you to find a doctor you trust. No, you don’t really have a choice about letting someone give him a transfusion, but you do have a choice about who’s going to do it.”  
“Oh.” Skywarp was quiet for a minute, looking down at his cockpit where He Who Needed No Medical Intervention had his face pressed against the glass. “Doctors are weird. I like them.”

* * *

  
“Hey,” Thundercracker said softly, slipping into the room.  
Starscream looked up from feeding the moros and frowned at him. “Don’t you have five mori to take care of?”  
“I’m happy to see you too.” Thundercracker came across the floor, and for the thousandth time Starscream marveled silently at how he made no sound, not the slightest click as he dropped to his knees in front of Starscream. “It was suggested I refuel, recharge, and refresh myself.”  
Starscream set down the bottle, and held out the moros to Thundercracker. “You say that as if you’re paraphrasing.”  
The moros fit easily in his cupped hands, but the cord was too short for Thundercracker to hold him close. Soon, as soon as the machines were prepared, the vrefos would receive a protoform donation from Starscream. The machines took hours to warm up properly for such a delicate procedure, and every line of code Starscream and the moros shared through the cord would help prevent a fatal rejection. The transfusion would double and more the amount of protoform he had, which paradoxically lowered the risk it would reject, but Starscream wasn’t about to play with the odds.  
The vrefos should be dead already, but Ratchet just shook his head and said he must have inherited it from Skywarp, the stubborn refusal to die when it was medically impossible for him to keep on living.  
“What did they actually tell you?” Starscream asked, as Thundercracker touched the sparking with a gentleness few ever saw. Did Skywarp know what it meant to have Thundercracker handle his kori as if they were the fragilest glass? No, Starscream didn’t think so, not when he treated Skywarp the same way.  
Thundercracker chuckled. “What Ambulon actually told me was that I smelled, and I was to leave and not come back until I had a shower. And when I asked about the mori, he said I was cranky, so I should get a cube and a nap too.”  
“Did you counter with an army story?”  
“I was going to.” Thundercracker set the moros back on Starscream’s lap and covered him with the palm of his hand, hiding the golden light of his spark leaking through the seams. “That’s when He Who Unlocked The Third Flow Level threw up all over me.”  
“Which one is that?” Starscream asked, trying to hide his amusement. In their hands, the smallest maridos stretched and yawned silently.  
“The twin.” Thundercracker slid his other hand under the moros and tucked him into Starscream’s cockpit. “So I borrowed the staff shower and drank a cube in it.”  
“You say borrow, that’s not what I hear.” Starscream closed his cockpit, to allow the vrefos to rest. Eating exhausted him, and if not for the direct line to his tank Ratchet had installed in his first few hours the nipios would have starved. But with the tube safely in place, Starscream fed the moros by mouth only to teach him to suck and swallow, so that one day he might be weaned off of it. Once the fuel was in his tank, the vrefos processed it as well as any mech his age, something First Aid called a miracle and Ambulon grumbled about. “Did you have permission?”  
Thundercracker shrugged, and folded his arms over Starscream’s knees, and laid his head down. “I was following doctor’s orders.”  
“And the nap?”  
Thundercracker shrugged again, not looking up. “I can still recharge anywhere, under any conditions, in any position.”  
Starscream didn’t argue, and didn’t laugh, just stroked his sieziegos’s head until the moros woke again, and he returned to patiently dropping energon into the tiny, thirsty mouth. It was easier, with Thundercracker draped over his lap, warm and solid. It would take an earthquake to dislodge him. Starscream wasn’t sure what an earthquake entailed, but it was an idiom Thundercracker had picked up off world, and it seemed apt now. Starscream propped the vrefos against the side of Thundercracker’s head, with the fuel line running over his arm, and gravity aided the energon flow while the moros was kept warm enough. He even managed to swallow a few mouthfuls, once he was no longer distracted by the new position and unfamiliar EM field.  
But all too soon the moros was full and snuggled back in Starscream’s cockpit, tiny mind working at capacity to process all the data from this new person. It was, Starscream chose to believe, a good sign. Thundercracker was heavy on his legs though, and the bottle was empty. The pump was out of his reach and waking Thundercracker up was always a gamble. Starscream was just considering radioing for help when the door slid open and First Aid clacked his way across the floor.  
Thundercracker was online and standing between the door and his family with a swiftness that Starscream hadn’t seen since before Skywarp disappeared, but he didn’t attack or even threaten the nurse. “There you are,” First Aid said. “I’ve been looking for you.”  
“Why?” Thundercracker asked, and Starscream didn’t need to see his face to know he was narrowing his optics at the interloper.  
“Skywarp had a seizure. You need to come take care of the mori while we take care of him.” There wasn’t time for more than the merest brush of wingtips before Thundercracker left, no words they needed to say. Seizures were never good, were capable of ripping apart a healthy mech’s very spark, and Skywarp had less than twenty percent of his left.  
Starscream shook his head. He couldn’t help Skywarp, he couldn’t help Thundercracker. He could only help this tiny one in his cockpit, who needed his energon and his code and his protoform. At least now he could get up and reach the pump.

* * *


	9. θʹ

“I know you didn’t have quite the same education as most people,” Ratchet said once Skywarp’s optics lit up, “so I’m going to start at the beginning and if I go too fast, I want you to stop me so I can explain. It’s very important that you understand exactly what I’m telling you.”  
“What happened?” Skywarp asked, looking around. “Where are my otoki?”  
“They’re getting their newborn screening tests,” Ratchet said. “Thundercracker is with them. All maridi get these tests before they’re released. They are considerably healthier than you right now.”  
Skywarp pulled himself up, unassisted. That was a good sign, if a little disturbing. Skywarp’s powers of recovery were vastly superior to anyone else Ratchet had ever met –but he still had a limit that he refused to respect. “What happened?” he repeated.  
“As a spark spins, it transforms energon into energy that a mech’s body uses to power both his hardware and his software. If no energy leaves the spark, then his hardware freezes and his software crashes. If his fuel pump isn’t powered, or its driver is offline, it won’t pump more fuel into his spark chamber. Without energon, the spark will consume itself to keep the body going.” Ratchet fixed Skywarp with his fiercest expression. “That’s bad enough for a healthy person, but when a mech is down to one-eighth of a spark, then you nearly die from feeding your mori too much.”  
“I didn’t mean to,” Skywarp said, plucking at a sparangos that had been left on his berth.  
“I know you didn’t mean to,” Ratchet said. “That doesn’t change the fact that too much of your energon was filtered for vrefi, not leaving enough in your tanks for you to stay alive, much less help your spark heal. You managed to feed your vrefi right into desanguination. Do you know what that word means? Don’t be ashamed if you don’t, it’s a big one.”  
“Um, falling out of bed?” Skywarp guessed.  
“It means you didn’t have enough energon in you to stay alive. You fell out of bed because you were dying.”  
“Oh.”  
Ratchet cycled air through his vents, and weighed his next words carefully, keeping them as simple as possible. He didn’t want yet another misunderstanding. “Now you are only going to feed them from bottles,” he said to the black Seeker, who wasn’t nearly afraid enough. “And you are not filling those bottles yourself. You may carry one in your cockpit only if he goes in full. You are going to let other people feed your mori, or you will not live to see them grow. Do you understand?”  
“Yes,” Skywarp said, rather mulishly. “You don’t want me to feed my own tenki. I understand.”  
“I don’t want you to die.” Ratchet wondered if shaking Skywarp would jostle whatever was broken back into place. “I would prefer you keep all your energon and your clock cycles for yourself, but since that has about the same chance of happening as the sun coming up in the west, I am giving you the absolute maximum you can safely do. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to like me. You just have to do what I say.”  
“They should come first,” Skywarp argued. “The mori need it more than I do, they should get it first.”  
No wonder Thundercracker was developing a permanent dent between his eyes. Skywarp wasn’t being willfully obtuse to prove his strength –he honestly would happily sacrifice himself for his tenki. That was something he would have learned long ago, and it was beyond Ratchet’s ken to fight against an entire culture. “Do they need it more than they need you?”  
Skywarp didn’t say anything, looking down at the sparangos in his hands.  
“Between the other two, your nipii will get more than enough nanites and code,” Ratchet said, gently. “But there’s more to geneos than nursing.”  
“All I can do is sit and hold them,” Skywarp said, voice thick with impotent rage, hands fisting around the sparangos.  
“That’s important too,” Ratchet said. “And it won’t last forever. You’ve lost seven-eighths of your spark, don’t forget, you’ll get better.” Or he’d die, but Ratchet wasn’t going to bet on that. Skywarp was remarkably resilient when it came to things that should have killed him. “I’ll tell Thundercracker,” Ratchet added. Telling Thundercracker was as good as telling Starscream, and between the two of them they’d keep Skywarp from doing anything too stupid. It would be a little unethical, except Skywarp had agreed long ago to involve those two in his medical decisions.  
“Okay,” Skywarp said, smoothing the sparangos out.  
“Skywarp,” Ratchet said. “Feeding them won’t slow your recovery. Well, it will, but more importantly, it will kill you. Do you understand what I’m saying? If you don’t listen to me, you will die, and after all you’ve survived do you want to be killed by something so easily avoided?”

* * *

  
“Are you still alive?” Ambulon asked as he came in the room. “Are you going to die in the next thirty-five minutes?”  
“I’m fine,” Skywarp said, not looking up from his tiny black kori. The twin sucked at the bottle, optics never leaving Skywarp’s face. Like all his other tenki, this one had bright blue optics, the color rapidly becoming Skywarp’s favorite.  
“He’s been behaving,” Thundercracker confirmed with a grin. He was greasing the big one’s joints. One day, Skywarp would allow Ratchet to install synovial fluid reservoirs in his tenki, so that they would be strong and properly formed, not prone to blocking and oddly-shaped like Skywarp’s own. But the maridi were far too small still, too small to be put under for surgery and also there was no place for the reservoirs to fit.  
Ambulon gave a disbelieving snort. “I didn’t know you had it in you,” he said. “You have a visitor. Maybe she can talk some sense into you.”  
“About what?” Skywarp wiped Twin’s face with the sparangos, and cradled the moros upright. Twin thunked his head against his trefos’ shoulder in what Thundercracker referred to as “headbutts of love.”  
“I’m not picky,” Ambulon said as he turned to let the visitor know that Skywarp was ready. Then he left them, as the visitor came in.  
“Congratulations on not dying,” Slipstream said wryly, coming straight to Skywarp and embracing him one-handed, the other hand holding a bag. “How are you doing?”  
Skywarp hugged her back. “I have five mori and a cube of non-reactive energon,” he said. “I have everything I ever wanted.”  
Slipstream leaned back, arm still around him, brows raised. “Really?” she asked, optics piercing right through his helm.  
“No,” he said quietly, “but … not now.”  
She nodded, and pulled him close again. “I won’t make you,” she whispered to him, as she had said so many times before, “but when you’re ready, I’ll listen.”  
“I’ll tell you,” he promised, “Later.” Later, when the ache in his spark didn’t rise up and overwhelm him at the very thought. Later, when the burn had cooled to something that could be described in mere words.  
Slipstream squeezed him gently one last time, then sat on the bed next to Skywarp’s legs. “This is one of them?” she asked, offering a finger to the twin.  
“No, we stole one from the nursery to keep ours company.” Skywarp grinned, and held the moros out to her. “Do you want to hold him?”  
Slipstream set the bag down and took the nipio in both hands, as delicately as a sacred relic. “Oh, Skywarp, he’s perfect.”  
“That one has a surprise twin, he’s in the cradle now,” Skywarp told her. “And TC has the big one.”  
“He Who Is A Precocious Academy Student,” Thundercracker put in.  
“Why are you calling him that?”  
“Because he chugs until he throws up and passes out.” Thundercracker handed the silver and gold nipio to Skywarp. The vrefos was still all green, and he cuddled against Skywarp’s chest without a word of protest, watching Slipstream cradle his nosokos. “And He Who Has Yet To Cry is in my cockpit, but he should be waking up soon.”  
“They’re adorable,” Slipstream said. “You’re so lucky.”  
“I know,” Skywarp said, smiling.  
“They could have looked like you,” Slipstream continued. “I brought you a present.” She toed the bag with her foot.  
“Open it, TC? My hands are kinda full.”  
Thundercracker, wary of gifts given to Skywarp after long experience, picked up the bag. He opened it, and poorly hid his wince as he reached in.  
There was no explosion of paint, though, and he lifted out five little pendants, magnetized to stick to metal. They were stylized Seekers, inscribed with glyphs from the Book of Primus. Thundercracker, for onces silent on the subject of religion, handed them to Skywarp.  
Skywarp found one that said, “widespread wings protect,” and placed it on the chest of the vrefos he held.  
“I heard you had five,” Slipstream said. “Does my nosokos have him?”  
“He’s still under observation,” Thundercracker said.  
“But he’s doing good!” Skywarp added, handing one of the magnets to Slipstream. It said “and with knowledge, is safety.” She placed it on the chest of the tenkos, and Twin hugged her arm.  
One of the magnets said, “shadows protect,” and he saved that for his tiniest, blind son. The other two he handed to Thundercracker.  
Thundercracker didn’t need to ask which was for which. On the red one he placed “the stillness of joy, of sorrow,” and he saved the one that said “trust in Primus, update your antivirus,” for the surprise infant in his cockpit.  
“So you’re waiting for him to be ready to go home? Also there’s more in the bag.”  
“Oh no,” Thundercracker said, tentatively reaching into the bag again. “He’ll be here until he can eat on his own, we can’t stay that long. They’ll need the bed.” The bag also held a foil-wrapped package.  
“That’s for Skywarp,” Slipstream said. “When do you get sprung then? Are the others ready to go?”  
“Tell her.” Thundercracker traded the package for the vrefos on Skywarp’s lap. “Tell her why we’re not going home yet.”  
Skywarp ducked his head and wished he was holding one of the mori still. “I had a, what do you call it two days ago, a seizure, and fell out of bed.”  
Slipstream looked at him, and in that moment it was easy to see that she and Starscream shared a enkyos. “Why do I get the feeling that as horrible as that is, you’re hiding something worse?”  
“Tell her what caused the seizure,” Thundercracker said, because he could be a real jerk sometimes.  
“Ratchet said I fed them too much?”  
“Skywarp.” Slipstream reached behind and slapped him up the back of the head, then pulled him forward for another hug. “What were you thinking? Primus invented bottles for a reason!”  
“I didn’t realize I was that low!” Skywarp protested. Slipstream’s grip was tight on his shoulders, and between them Twin was squirming.  
"Well, listen to Ratchet from now on." Slipstream let him go, optics dim. "And don't even think about feeding them anymore. Nursing yourself to death is a mortal sin, you know."  
Skywarp looked down at his hands, but didn't say anything. He hadn't known...but he'd suspected that maybe feeding them himself wouldn't be the most logical thing.  
"Really?" Thundercracker asked. "I haven't kept up on the masterlist. How long has that been offensive to Primus? It seems quite specific."  
Slipstream looked at him, away from Skywarp, and Skywarp felt less like flinging himself to the floor and begging her forgiveness. Partly because she was one of his few friends -and partly because this was all too much like trying to explain to Starscream.  
"It falls under killing oneself by not asking for help," she said. "That's been on the list for a very long time. Primus granted us intelligence to be used." She shifted Twin on her lap. “Now open your present,” she ordered, lecture done with.  
Skywarp carefully peeled away the wrapping. He’d known it would be a video game from the shape, but he was still surprised to see The Plating Of Six Technoanimals inside. Had that game come out already?  
“Now since you’re going to be sitting on your aft and not feeding mori, I expect you to be a decent challenge by the time they’re baptized,” she said. “I’m sure you can play it while they sleep on you.”  
“I’ll find the time,” he said with a grin.  
“Good. Just because you’re a geneos doesn’t mean you have to give up everything.” Slipstream leaned forward and hugged him again. She kept doing that, and it wasn’t like Skywarp had come back from the dead or anything.  
Well, he’d almost died, when the avegi were detaching and again after he fed them too much. He’d almost left behind his precious mori and followed the other four to the Well. He’d almost died twice in two deca-cycles, less. And he didn’t want to die, oh he very much wanted to live.  
Thundercracker’s hand was trembling on his back, except it wasn’t shaking, Skywarp was. He couldn’t leave his miracles, his saviors, not when he hadn’t paid them back yet. He needed to live, to take care of them, he couldn’t leave them!  
“Easy, easy,” Thundercracker murmured in his audial. “We’re not going anywhere.”  
But that wasn’t what Skywarp was afraid of.

* * *

  
Skywarp handed the red nipios to Thundercracker. “They’re coming soon, right?”  
“Yes,” Thundercracker said, plugging the red nipios in the rolling cradle. Three other cradles sat next to it, each with a nipios recharging inside. They were so strong now, ready to go home as soon as Skywarp was, and Skywarp refused to leave at least before seeing his last moros.  
Skywarp fidgeted, and reached for his cube. He could drink without getting sick again finally, and he was so used to the irradiated taste of antiemetics he almost missed them. Almost. This energon was normal, though Ratchet would send him home with supplements to add three times a day.  
Home but not home. He was going back to Starscream and Thundercracker’s place, where there was a nursery all set up, where it was quiet. Ratchet was letting him go under strict orders to take it easy that were the next thing to bedrest, with Thundercracker assigned to take care of four vrefi. Home but not home, where he’d lived the last few paracycles, where Megatron might come, where he couldn’t accidentally run into Megatron.  
Home, and home for his otoki, and help he knew he so desperately needed, and everything he could want except Megatron. “How soon?”  
“I don’t know,” Thundercracker said, peeking out the door. “Skywarp, before you see him, there’s something I have to tell you.”  
“You’re madly in love with my tail fins and want me to run away with you?”  
Thundercracker shook his head and sat down in the chair he’d been living in for the past two deca-cycles. “No, but you know how strong we say he is?”  
Skywarp nodded.   
“We mean strong for his size. And he is very, very small.” Thundercracker cupped his hands together. “Barely bigger than a scraplet.”  
“But alive and fighting,” Skywarp said. He was hiding worry, but not the same worry as Thundercracker. He’d seen tiny mori before, weak mori, mori that hadn’t quite coalesced right. Whatever his otokos looked like, however he was damaged, Skywarp would love him just as much as his perfectly-formed adelfi. He only hoped that the moros wouldn’t die like so many others he had seen.  
“Alive and fighting,” Thundercracker agreed. “He’s down to just one monitor, and he still has a feeding intake, but he’ll be hooked up to some wires.”  
“I’ll be careful,” Skywarp promised. “And he’s blind, too?”  
Thundercracker nodded. “Ratchet says not to worry about it until he’s bigger. The hardware’s all there, but the signal’s not transmitting.”  
“I know,” Skywarp said. “Where is he?”  
“Very soon.” Thundercracker stood up and paced. “I’m going to go get some energon, do you want some?” he asked.  
“I’m good, thanks,” Skywarp said, and Thundercracker left.  
He came back far too quickly to have made it to the dispenser and back, empty handed, with a carefully blank expression not even Starscream could have read. Starscream himself followed, limping a little.  
“What happened to you?” Skywarp asked as Starscream took a seat and his sieziegos hovered behind him.  
“Remember how you agreed to let him have a protoform donation?” Starscream asked, as his cockpit clicked open. The glass lifted with a hiss of hydraulics and Skywarp heard nothing else, all his attention focused on the bundle Thundercracker lifted out gently and placed in his lap.  
With shaking fingers, Skywarp unwrapped the warming sparganos and the sparangos inside. He was a tiny thing, too tiny to believe. Skywarp slid his fingers under him, carefully avoiding the wire that emerged from his chassis to the monitor attached to his thigh, even more careful around the fresh weld where he’d received a protoform transfusion. “Hey, little,” he said, before his vocalizer quit and he had to reset it. “Hey, little one. How ya doing?” He lifted the nipios up to his face.  
Even though his eyes were dark, Skywarp could feel the nipios inspecting him. It was an unnerving stare, and not just because there was no light spilling out. No, the nipios regarded him seriously, judging him with a maturity beyond his few days.  
Or so it felt to Skywarp, who wanted nothing more than to be judged worthy to keep this fragile spark –all five of them, of course, but this one had one foot in the Well. He brought the moros closer and nestled him under his chin, cradled safe.  
For a long time, nobody spoke. Skywarp moved to cover him with the warming sparganos, and Thundercracker jumped up to do it, looking to Skywarp for approval. Starscream stood and made his way over by the other cradles, reading the monitors of each one in turn.  
Skywarp spread his hand over his son’s wings and shuttered his optics. He could feel tiny fans whirring, a small pump thumping away, fast but steady. He could almost feel the spinning of his spark, under tiny cables tensing, tiny gears fitting together.  
His otokos was alive. Gloriously, firmly, strongly alive. Everything else was doable. All five of his kori were alive.  
Skywarp broadcast a prayer, thanksgiving and gratitude from the spark, simple in its honesty and pure in its wordless simplicity. The nipios shifted and flailed, nuzzling deeper into Skywarp’s collar. So tiny, still fragile, but at least Skywarp got to hold him once, stroke over his wings with a gentle finger. His wings were the size of Skywarp’s fingers. No, he would stay, and Skywarp would thank Primus and Ratchet for every minute he spent in the hospital, instead of sending him home to die “in love.”  
Eventually, eventually, after an age of Skywarp memorizing his slight weight and soft angles, Starscream laid a hand on Skywarp’s leg. Skywarp didn’t acknowledge him, dreading the moment he had to hand him over. It would have to be soon, from the blinking of the little yellow light reflected on Skywarp’s lap. The nipios needed a defrag and a debug.  
“Open,” Starscream ordered, tapping on Skywarp’s cockpit. “He needs to be plugged in. Unless you want me to do it?”  
“I can do it,” Skywarp said. He popped open his cockpit and lined it with the sparangos. The nipios was so damn small, small enough that Skywarp wouldn’t walk without additional padding, and he grabbed Skywarp’s finger with a grip too easy to break.


	10. ιʹ

When the doorbell rang, Thundercracker set He Who Needs To Learn Some Patience on Skywarp’s lap. Skywarp was technically recharging, but he retained enough awareness to reach out and snag the moros' arm. “Nobody move,” Thundercracker told the sleeping moros, the red one staring at the ceiling, the twins curled around each other on the floor, and Skywarp who might not have been able to if he wanted.  
Ratchet was on the other side of the door, followed by his assistant Drift with a large box and another mech, vaguely familiar, with a smaller box. Thundercracker regarded the last mech suspiciously –he was short but not quite a minibot, with lighted fins on the side of his head and no mouth. “Who are you?” Thundercracker asked, not caring if his tone was brusque.  
Ratchet looked like he was going to protest, but the unfamiliar mech pushed past him, flicking a recognition scan over Thundercracker. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Wheeljack. I’m Ratchet’s sieziegos.”  
Thundercracker flicked his own recognition scan over Wheeljack, a little deeper than strictly polite, but there were four mori and Skywarp to think of, and Jhiaxus’ reach was long. Wheeljack wasn’t carrying any weapons, though, and Thundercracker was fairly certain he could take the mech down if he had to.  
With a sharp nod, Thundercracker stepped back. “We come bearing gifts!” Wheeljack chirped. He was a chipper little thing. Thundercracker wondered how Ratchet could stand him. Drift offered Thundercracker an apologetic smile as he trailed the other two inside.  
Ratchet found the living room easily enough, and pointed Drift towards the kitchen. Wheeljack set down his box and made to follow, but Thundercracker stood in their way. “What are you doing?”  
“We brought you a filter machine!” Wheeljack’s fins flashed a bright, cheery lavender.  
“A wha?” Skywarp asked from the couch.  
“A filter machine! To make moros bottles!”  
“Those don’t exist,” Thundercracker said slowly, as Ratchet demanded Skywarp let him check out the Seeker. Mori were fed entirely by energon filtered through a grown mech’s body, and one moros would take in the supply of two or three adults. With four mori, and Skywarp unable to produce without risking his own health, they had been using donated energon to supplement what little Thundercracker had, and Starscream fed the fifth entirely on his own. But the donated stuff was in short supply, and they had no way of knowing what was in it ahead of time–the twins already had one bad reaction to alnico- and if there was any alternative, Thundercracker would have found out by now.  
“That’s because I just invented it,” Wheeljack was far too happy about his invention. “It’s perfectly safe, I promise.”  
Thundercracker looked at him, letting his face speak his feelings.  
“It won’t explode! I tested it and everything.” Wheeljack set his box on the floor and rummaged around in it, finally producing a bottle. “Here,” he said, offering it to Thundercracker. “Try it.”  
Thundercracker twisted the bottle open and sipped just a little of it, just enough for his chemoreceptors to analyze. It came back as ultra-filtered energon, vrefos grade, with a higher mineral density than mech-produced energon, but none of the nanites so essential to a vrefos’ survival.  
“It’s not perfect,” Wheeljack said, flashing an apologetic blue, “but I’ve gotten it so you can supplement with all five yourself and, you know.”  
“Thank you,” Thundercracker said, trying to sound properly grateful. It was hard. The mech kept flashing colors.  
“You and Drift, go set it up in the kitchen,” Ratchet ordered, and Thundercracker had to fight to halt his vocalizer. Ratchet had invaded and conquered his house to help, he reminded himself, and a wise soldier never argued with a medic. “Well,” Ratchet continued to Skywarp, “you’re not going to die today. Probably. You’re at twenty-five percent, so if it was anyone but you I’d say you were two steps from the Well, but I know you by now. Let me see that moros.”  
“Why?” Skywarp asked, not relinquishing the moros he held.  
“To make sure he’s not going to die.”  
Skywarp handed him over immediately, but Thundercracker glared at Ratchet, medic or Senator or not, some things were just uncalled for. “We’ve managed to keep them alive at home for three days,” he said, levelly as he could.  
“I know.” Ratchet’s optics were distant as he scanned the data from the mercifully quiet vrefos. “But every new moros is inspected by a doctor three days after leaving the hospital. I thought,” and the sarcasm was thick enough in Ratchet’s voice for the moros to grab hold of and chew, “that you would appreciate a home visit, rather than hauling all five of these down to the office.”  
“Thank you,” Thundercracker ground out. “Nobody told me about that.”  
Ratchet made a noise that Thundercracker chose not to believe was a snort. Ratchet was going above and beyond the call of duty here, he’d earned a little irritation with Thundercracker’s ill-preparedness. “You did know you’d be bringing home mori?” the doctor asked, like he hadn’t been warning them to not get their hopes up for paracycles. He turned back to the moros in his arms, muttering under his breath about idiots who spent all their time planning for the birth with no thought to the tenkos.  
Thundercracker retreated in the direction of the kitchen. Ratchet called after him, “Tell Wheeljack this one needs a paci.”  
Wheeljack was cheerfully directing Drift in the construction of the machine, which seemed to involve a lot of tubing and a lot of Drift holding things up for Wheeljack to screw together. The secretary nodded gravely at Thundercracker, who nodded back. Drift was a good kid. He had a bad past, from what Thundercracker heard, but that didn’t make him any less of a good kid. Thundercracker respected anyone so committed to self-improvement. And who could spend so much time in Ratchet’s company without flinging himself out a window.  
“All right, it’s ready!” Wheeljack said. “Do you have a bottle in here?”  
“In the autoclave,” Thundercracker said. Drift was standing in front of the appliance, and he fetched one of the small silicate bottles.  
“Now, you wanna put the bottle in here, obviously, and you hit the big button, and tada!” Wheeljack demonstrated, and the bottle filled with a single ounce of energon. “It’ll do one ounce at a time, so when they get bigger just hit the button as many times as you need. Once a day, pop out this chip and plug it into the cradles, the machine will calibrate itself.” Wheeljack tapped a protruding circle that was just slightly bigger than a cradle hookup.  
“Where does the energon come from?” Thundercracker asked, curious despite himself. This machine changed everything. This machine would make this crazy idea workable.  
“Just pour whatever you have in the hopper up here.” Wheeljack indicated a hatch on top of the machine. “It’ll filter out the vrefos stuff just as easy as your own systems. Uses the same kinda filter too, you’ll need to replace it every deca-cycle or so.” Wheeljack pulled a filter halfway out the side of the machine, the same kind of filter Thundercracker slotted into his own chest every couple of days to produce the ultra-rarified energon the vrefi needed. “Now it’s gonna take a few hours; I modelled it after Starscream since he’s who I could getta hold’ve, but it works about three times as slow as him. So you want to fill the reservoir and it’ll sit just fine. Half this bulk is climate-control.” And indeed, the machine took up nearly half the counter. “It’ll hold about a hundred ounces at a time, enough energon for you for a day. If I was designing this for mass-production, I’d give it a quarter of that capacity, but you have four.”  
From the living room, He Who Needs to Learn Some Patience started crying, but since it was his “I am not actually hungry but I want to eat” cry and both Skywarp and Ratchet were in there, Thundercracker didn’t immediately run into the other room. Instead, he nodded along to Wheeljack’s explanation. It seemed simple enough. “Why aren’t you designing this for mass-production?”  
Wheeljack flashed a complicated bit of ultraviolet. “Needed someone to use the prototype. Me an’ Ratch, we don’t know nobody with kids, an’ we’re done with them our own selves.” He picked up the box and headed back into the living room.  
“That’s because Ratchet won’t have any more after what happened with their youngest,” Drift murmured, following Wheeljack.  
“What happened?”  
“He named himself Slag.” Drift’s face was perfectly straight, a little too straight, but Drift never lied.  
Before Thundercracker could properly process that, he heard Ratchet say, “Who in the slagging nine pits of cold Neutrino hell fed you that line?”  
Skywarp was clutching a wailing vrefos to himself, while Ratchet was simultaneously yelling at him and scanning He Who Insists On Sleeping Transformed. Wheeljack was digging through a box, unconcerned.  
“What line?” Thundercracker interrupted, because a blind mech could see Skywarp would tell Ratchet anything to make him stop yelling, just didn’t know what the magic words were.  
“That mori given pacis forget how to suck. Primus, I’ve seen Sykwhores better prepared for tekni than you three.”  
Thundercracker gave Ratchet his best “what are you talking about, you crazy mech,” slow blink. “Sykwhores have better survival rates,” he said, calmly as he could. Sometimes words were far more effective weapons than rifles. “We’re quite prepared for recycling, on your recommendation.”  
Ratchet gave him a look that would melt a lesser mech, but Thundercracker was right and they both knew it. “Here’s one!” Wheeljack flashed blinding-yellow and surfaced with what looked like a bottle top attached to a prisoner gag. He popped it into the mouth of He Who Really Needs To Stop Crying, and the large vrefi stopped immediately, sucking away contentedly. “Now as long as he quits before he starts school, that won’t hurt him a bit,” Wheeljack said to Thundercracker. “Let him suck on it as much as he wants. Kid’s got an oral fixation and that’ll make your life unbelievably easier.”  
Skywarp stroked the vrefos’ back and opened his mouth to apologize. Ratchet rolled his optics and interrupted, “There is so much idiot propaganda floating around, I swear there’s an organized conspiracy to keep genei completely unable to participate in public life. To what end, I don’t know.” He looked at Thundercracker. “With these five, bad advice is a waste of time at best, so as long as their numbers are green, do whatever gets you through the night.”  
Skywarp nodded dumbly, Thundercracker shrugged and took He Who Is Going to Roll Right out the Door from Ratchet. “The machine will help. Thank you.”  
“Those two look good,” Ratchet said, sitting on the floor to check one of the twins. “Any major problem you’d be able to see, of course, though I wouldn’t trust just anyone to do it. I’m looking for small problems that will become major. You’re getting their joints greased?”  
“We stick to a schedule.” Since the mori had neither the hardware nor the software to keep their moving parts properly lubricated, it was necessary to grease the joints every four hours. Now it was easy enough, if time-consuming with four of them, but as they grew old enough to fight, it would be more difficult, and Thundercracker was not looking forward to it. The procedure could be a bit messy, and until Skywarp could reliably walk to the station they’d set up and back without falling over it was Thundercracker’s duty alone.  
But since he was managing to feed the mori fully half the time, and take care of his own basic needs, Thundercracker figured Skywarp would be able to help by the time the mori could run away. Starscream had worried that Skywarp would be another helpless person dependent on Thundercracker for everything, and First Aid hadn’t had much evidence to disabuse him of that notion, but as weak as Skywarp was these days, he was still light-years ahead of even the most optimistic projections.  
“Welcome to your life for the next few paracycles,” Ratchet said. “You are getting help?”  
Thundercracker shrugged, shifting the red nipio as he transformed to fall asleep. “Don’t really need it.”  
Ratchet frowned, concentration turned inward. Wheeljack said, “Now’s the time to arrange for some. Get some friends, we’re always up for it, and get the kiddos used to them before you’re calling around looking for someone to keep an eye on them while you sit down and drink a whole cube at once to save your sanity.” He picked up Surprise, who stared at his flashing fins.  
Thundercracker doubted it would ever get as bad as all that, but he filed away Wheeljack’s offer anyways. “Is everything alright?” he asked Ratchet.  
“Yes,” Ratchet said, disengaging from the moros and swapping with Wheeljack. “There was something anomalous in his code, but I tracked it down and it was nothing.”  
Thundercracker channeled Starscream's best “don’t lie to me” look.  
“The amount of nanites showing up on a preliminary survey may have been a sign he’s not absorbing them properly,” Ratchet said, plugging in for the last check. “But his last few bottles must have been light on them since a deeper scan showed plenty in his reservoir. Perfectly normal variation. If you’re still worried, tonight plug him into a cradle and ask it for variable nineteen eighty-four, and as long as it’s above a hundred and thirteen, which it will be, he’s fine.”  
“And if it’s not?”  
“Then check again at a decent klik tomorrow morning and if by some dark miracle it still isn’t, call me.” Wheeljack handed Thundercracker the moros in question. It was a little awkward still for Thundercracker to juggle two, especially when one was in alt-mode, but he wasn’t about to hand one off to Drift. The secretary had retreated so far back away from the mori he was trying to alloy himself with the wall. Nothing good ever came of handing a vrefos to someone who didn’t want to hold one.  
Skywarp, showing signs of life for the first time in a while, held his hands out for Surprise. “But they’re all okay?” he asked.  
“Yes,” Ratchet said, coiling up his cord. “They’re all just fine, by any metric. When your biggest problem is not giving one a paci enough, you’re doing a marvelous job.”  
“There’s some more pacis in the box, and some bottles,” Wheeljack said. “And some extra sparangi. You can never have too many sparangi.”  
“Thank you,” Skywarp said, Surprise tucked against his shoulder. Drift peeled himself off the wall at a look from Ratchet.  
“You’re welcome,” Wheeljack flashed pink. “We’ll get out of your hair. Call if you need anything, yeah?”  
“You’re leaving already?” Skywarp had that hiding surprise look on his face. Thundercracker wondered if he’d dozed off.  
“Don’t want to throw them off schedule,” Ratchet said, and it wasn’t mocking thought it could have been.  
And then they were gone, and Thundercracker was once again left alone with five helpless mechs. But at least now he had a way to feed them all. He set down the red one next to Skywarp, sat down on his other side, and started feeding He Who Needs More Nanites.  
He wished Starscream was there.

* * *

  
Starscream looked up as the door opened. Drift was on the other side, and leaning on him was…Skywarp? Starscream opened his cockpit to unplug the moros, and asked, “What are you doing here?”  
“Ratchet wanted to talk to me,” Skywarp shrugged, making his way to the room’s other chair with Drift’s help. The secretary slipped out as soon as Skywarp was settled, and Starscream handed the vrefos over to his enkyos. “And how are you, little one?” Skywarp cooed.  
Starscream stood, and stretched out kinked cables, and tried not to listen to Skywarp embarrassing himself all over the moros. “Ratchet wanted to talk to you here?”  
“Yeah,” Skywarp confirmed, offering the little one a finger to gnaw on. “Sent Drift to come get me and everything.”  
“And you left Thundercracker alone with four mori.” Starscream rubbed his hand over his face. “Why do you hate him?”  
“He’ll do fine,” Skywarp said. “He’s got Wheeljack’s freq, and Novalight’s. Yes, your trefos will do just fine by himself, your nosoki won’t give him any trouble.”  
Starscream highly doubted that. If nothing else, they were all the spawn of Skywarp. “Did Ratchet happen to mention what he wanted to talk about?”  
“He wanted you to be here too,” Skywarp said, which was not what he asked and answered his question. “How many times today?”  
Hooking his chair with a foot, Starscream sat back in it and waited for Ratchet, reveling in the chance to not be focused on the moros for a few minutes. He didn’t regret taking charge of the smallest and the weakest of the five, but just because he was the most suited didn’t mean Starscream had to like this deathwatch.  
“Four,” he said. Four times this day the little one’s spark had surged and sped up in its chamber, spilling radiation and energy in crackling waves along the small body. His armor warped and cracked under the pressure, wires burnt out and what little self-repair any nipio his age would have was taxed to the limit. Worse, the surges took up an incredible amount of fuel and he was so small, so weak, it was hard to replace it. It would be impossible without the direct line to his tank, but that was only so big.  
They were getting stronger, too. Eventually, one of them would hit so hard it would crack some internal component beyond repair, burn away too much fuel, dispel the cohesion of his very spark. Ratchet hadn’t even shown up for two days, sending instead Ambulon or First Aid to check the vrefos over after each episode. They were both very familiar with the case…but both their specialized training was for the period before the vrefi detached. A fully rogimed vrefos with such unique needs was far out of their comfort zone. Starscream tried to not read too much into that. This vrefos would live, would come home and be fine, if Starscream had to wrestle Mortilus himself into submission.  
Actually, that might be easier.  
Skywarp hummed a song Starscream didn’t recognize to the moros in his arms. Starscream twisted to face the door and waited. Ratchet appeared soon enough, and Starscream wondered if he had been waiting to give Skywarp some time with his tenkos. Ratchet’s face was grim.  
“His spark is strong,” the medic began without preamble.  
Starscream waited, very carefully not thinking about stars twice as bright. “That’s good, right?” Skywarp said.  
Ratchet shook his head. “Too strong,” he said. “His frame can’t properly handle its power output. The excess builds up, until it overloads and then floods his systems.”  
“Can you fix it?” Starscream asked, uninterested in the medical details. He didn’t need to hear how his little fighter was dying by millimeters right in front of him. Flashy, dramatic millimeters.  
“We can jump start his next upgrade,” Ratchet answered, looking at Skywarp. “His spark is more than strong enough. With a specialized case and an extra power sink, he should be okay.”  
A vrefos’ growth happened in leaps and pauses, new components integrated and new code written during long periods of no physical change, new parts installed by a medic using eons of research and well-intentioned mistakes. Or the new parts were built by self-repair nanites from the vrefos’ enkyos, slowly and imperfectly, with whatever components were dissolved in energon, without regard to the state of the tenkos’ processor or spark. Too slow, and the spark would overheat and extinguish, the code would stagnate and corrupt. Too fast and the processor wouldn’t keep up, the spark would slow its rotation, parts would not be recognized by the systems and grey out. Starscream imagined a death-grey glider with the moros' golden face and dark optics.  
Skywarp was nodding along like that was a brilliant idea, though, and Starscream kicked his chair. “What sort of specialized case?” Skywarp asked, misinterpreting or willfully ignoring the kick.  
“A stellite alloy,” Ratchet said. “I ordered one two days ago. It just came in this morning.”  
Skywarp nodded, and looked back down at the moros. “Okay. When can you do it?”  
Ratchet’s optics flickered as he powercycled his sensory suite. Starscream watched himself stand up, walk over behind Skywarp, and only just keep himself from slapping his fool head right off his neck. “Now you suddenly can make decisions?” someone demanded in a slightly hysterical tone. Starscream almost didn’t recognize his own voice.  
Skywarp shrugged, not looking up from his fingers against the moros' wings. “Not really a decision, though,” he said. “Either do it and he probably dies, or don’t and he definitely dies, right? So all I decide is if I trust Ratchet, and I do.”  
“Yes,” Ratchet said. “That’s about the shape of it.”  
“When?” Starscream asked. Skywarp’s logic was sound, now Starscream had seen everything, but it was.  
“The sooner the better,” Ratchet said. “I can have the room ready in a cycle.”  
“A cycle then,” Skywarp said, head still down. The moros was dozing against his chest.  
“I’ll call Thundercracker,” Starscream murmured, stroking over Skywarp’s wing as he followed Ratchet out.

* * *

  
The cycle passed far too quickly.  
Skywarp curled around the vrefos he held, humming softly. The moros stared sightlessly up at him, face serious and still. Skywarp traced the soft curves of his faux-wings, memorizing their span and their flex, committing to his deepest core the strength of his legs and the red and blue stripes so thin on white plating. There were so many memories in that folder already; Skywarp backed up in triplicate every moment he had with this too-bright ember. They might have to last him a lifetime.  
Starscream came in at one point, and Skywarp thought, distantly, that he might ask to hold the moros. He’d hand him over to Starscream, if asked, but if he didn’t…  
Skywarp had been taught there was something sacred about a maridos’ first form, and while he wasn’t quite sure where the lies ended and the truth began, he wanted to remember the shells of all his kori. This one was losing his first, of course Skywarp was following the stripes the same color as Starscream, and wasn’t that a funny coincidence? The two black vrefi, well, Skywarp himself was black, that only made sense. And the yellow that popped up now and again, Skywarp didn’t know who the trefos of his nipii was and he didn’t worry too much about it. But the bronze was the same color as Starscream’s, elemental and pure. Not many mechs had it.  
Funny coincidence.  
Starscream didn’t ask, though. He paced around the room, left once and came back with a cube of energon he didn’t drink. Skywarp was flagging badly by then, still not near recovered from their birth. This was the longest he’d been awake since he’d been discharged from the hospital himself, with four of his tenki. He fought the static creeping around the edges of his mind, turning off everything non-essential to sitting there awake holding his koros. Starscream would want him back eventually, and Skywarp had four others to take care of. He simply couldn’t divide himself into five parts to hold them all at once.  
“Skywarp,” Starscream said, very quietly, “it’s time.”  
“Mmm-hmm.” Skywarp made his reply part of the song he was humming. This one liked the vibration or the sound, much like the twins. He looked close to recharge, hands in tiny fists and legs limp.  
“You have to give him to Ambulon now.”  
Skywarp tried, he honestly did. Not as hard as he could have, but he did. His arms had other ideas, though, and he told Starscream “If I stop holding him, I’m going to hit someone.”  
“No, you won’t,” Starscream scoffed. “You’re going to hand him over so he can get upgraded and not die. Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind.”  
“I haven’t,” Skywarp said, and he wasn’t lying. He wanted his moros to be upgraded, to live. But he wanted that to happen without letting go. He wanted Thundercracker to be there. He wanted to take his koros, all his kori, and flee to Luna-1, where everything would be okay. “I don’t want to hit anyone,” he offered, somewhat lamely even to his own audials.  
“Hand him over before I hit you,” Starscream growled.  
Skywarp thought about that for a klik. Ambulon certainly didn’t seem impatient, and Starscream was a paperpusher. How hard could he hit, anyways?  
But the moros had his own ideas, crying out as he spasmed. Skywarp nearly dropped him, the radiation washing over him and making what was left of his spark ache in its too-large casing. Starscream grabbed his elbows and pulled the two of them against his chest, using his own body as a ground for what was a trivial amount of electricity for a healthy adult –but Skywarp wasn’t healthy and the moros wasn’t an adult.  
And then it was over as quickly as it started, with only the trembling of wingtips in its wake. Skywarp made himself let go of the vrefos, and Starscream handed him off to Ambulon without hesitation.  
“You can wait here,” Ambulon said, leaving swiftly, before the shock wore off.  
And then they were alone.

* * *

  
They sat together on the floor. Starscream wasn’t thrilled about playing backrest for Skywarp, but he was doing a lot of things lately he wasn’t thrilled about. He set the energon next to Skywarp’s hand, and after a few minutes Skywarp picked it up automatically, drank half of it before slumping further into Starscream’s shoulder. “You should recharge,” Starscream said.  
“Don’t wanna,” Skywarp said, but his voice was flat and his eyes were dull.  
“I’ll wake you up if anything happens,” Starscream promised. Skywarp was close to the edge either way, but it was healthier for him to shut down manually rather than have a failsafe kick in. “You want to be conscious when he comes back, don’t you?”  
“I guess,” Skywarp said, but his optics went dark and the humming of his systems died down a few minutes later, too slow to be automatic shutdown.  
Starscream settled in for the wait. He had no idea how long a first upgrade was supposed to take, and considering the circumstances it was pointless to ask for an estimate. Ambulon had wanted them to stay, so it couldn’t be expected to take too long, could it?  
For a while, Starscream sat and simply did nothing. Did not move, did not think, did not plan. At first it felt good, and then it was merely boring. After so many exciting days, boring was a relief in and of itself, and as the minutes ticked by he found it hard to want to do anything but exist. He could. He could have started in on paperwork, or comm’ed Thundercracker, or finished Skywarp’s cube. But he didn’t, just let time slip by. The upgrade wouldn’t take long enough to get anything done if he didn’t do anything.  
The door opened, and First Aid came in with a small box. “Ambulon said Skywarp would want this?” the nurse asked, and Starscream nudged Skywarp awake.  
“Wha-?” Skywarp said, quite intelligently, and Starscream stopped him from getting up.  
“He’s doing really good,” First Aid enthused, kneeling in front of the two Seekers. “We’re not quite half done yet, but Ambulon wanted you to have this.” He set the box down on Skywarp’s lap and stood back up. “I really need to get back there. You should get some rest while you can.” The nurse flitted out as lightly as he came, and Starscream cycled his vents. The moros was still alive.  
Skywarp peeked in the box, and his plating went cold. “His wings,” he said, very quietly, touching the useless parts with a finger.  
Starscream didn’t understand why Skywarp went still, or why he tucked the box away like the most precious of jewels. It didn’t really matter. “Finish your energon and go back down,” Starscream ordered.  
“Don’t you want up?” Skywarp asked.  
“I’m used to sitting still,” Starscream said. He wanted to go back to that no-time, that let it be only five minutes or so since he’d handed over the moros, plus or minus an eternity.  
Skywarp sipped his energon and said, “You should name him.”  
“He’s your Pitspawn,” Starscream pointed out.  
“I can’t name him!” Skywarp sounded a little panicky, like nipios names actually mattered. “You do it. He needs one in case…”  
“In case we all get terribly confused?” Starscream said. “You’re not letting Thundercracker name them, are you?”  
Skywarp grinned at that, weakly but definitively. “That’s why you need to do it. He’s already started, and he keeps changing them.”  
“I’m not naming your tekni,” Starscream said, though truthfully he didn’t mind the idea.  
“This one, he’s not really mine though.” Skywarp drained the last of the cube. “He’s ours. Mine and yours.”  
“Fine,” Starscream sighed, forestalling a conversation he didn’t even want to think about wanting to have. “I’ll name him if you can’t. Even though I already named Surprise.”  
“It’s what we’ll call him for ages,” Skywarp said. “When he’s trying to figure out who he is and what his proper name should be. Who decided I was qualified to do it? My genei called me number four.”  
“And I’m qualified because?” Starscream asked.  
“Because you’re the smartest guy I know,” Skywarp smiled. “You’ll think of a good one. That isn’t He Who Needs Constant Physical Contact.”  
“That is quite a mouthful,” Starscream agreed. “If you’ll go back down, I’ll think of one.”  
“Good,” Skywarp agreed, making himself comfortable against Starscream. “Make it awesome.”  
Starscream thought about it, and about how Skywarp was probably going to live and so Starscream really didn’t have to put up with all this slag, and how he never meant to steal the moros, he just did what needed to be done. When Ratchet came in, exhaustion and triumph palpable around him and a vrefos hooked up to a single monitor in his arms, Starscream had a name.  
But first he nudged Skywarp awake. Skywarp bounced up, a shadow of his old self, and took the bundle from Ratchet. “How is he?”  
“Let me guess,” Starscream said, trying to hide the stiffness of his legs after so long on the floor. “We almost lost him, but your skill saved the day.”  
“Far from it,” Ratchet said, looking far too damn smug. “He did just beautifully. We had time to go through and adjust everything to optimal specs, and repair a good bit of damage from the seizures. His self-repair can take care of the rest.”  
“He’s so small still,” Skywarp marveled, dropping into one of the chairs.  
“Yes,” Ratchet said. “Even though he’s technically a second-stager, he’s only the size of a newspark. It will keep his somatosensors from going haywire. His processor was more than adequate for second stage code upgrades, though I’d expect them to be slower than normal still. If any of them are an outlier, my money’s on him.”  
“So he’s magically all better now, praise Primus and pass the high grade?” Starscream asked, even though he knew the answer. That was just too good to be true.  
“He’s still blind,” Ratchet said. “Still small, and I don’t know how much this upgrade will affect anything other than the spark surges. All I will definitely say is that he’s out of immediate danger. We’ll monitor him for a bit, to make sure everything is settling in.”  
“How long is a bit?” Starscream asked. He was fairly certain Skywarp wasn’t hearing a word Ratchet said. But that was because all his attention was focused on the tiny vrefos in his arms, and the painstaking process of feeding him.  
“Long enough to make sure he doesn’t need a direct tank line anymore. Three days off of it, minimum. Then you can take him home.”  
The word hit Starscream like a punch to the airbrake. Take him home. He’d never thought he would. Starscream nodded. To take the vrefos home, let Thundercracker hold him, let him see his adelfi. Starscream hadn’t even considered those things.  
“I’ll be back to check on him later,” Ratchet said. Starscream barely registered him leaving.  
“So what’s his name,” Skywarp asked. “You did think of a name, right?”  
Starscream stood up, and walked over, and cupped his hand around the precious fragile head of his otokos. “Iridium.”

* * *

  
Skywarp sat with Roller in his lap, the vrefos sleeping in alt-mode with his wings spread wide. Skywarp was tracing them as he recharged, helping the moros build a somatic map. One day, he would need to register tiny changes in wind and air pressure on the wing or crash, and Skywarp’s fingers on his plating helped his processor understand that these particular inputs took priority. In recharge, the moros was still, so still that if he wasn’t so warm Skywarp would fear him dead. He was warm though, nearly hot, and Skywarp had forgotten how hot newsparks ran. It had surprised Thundercracker too, but he had glided with it, as he had with so many things.  
The big one was laying on his back on the floor, freshly greased limbs stretching as he practiced moving under Skywarp’s watchful optics. He could roll onto his front if he wanted, but the nipio was content to press his hands together in front of his face and stare at them. From the times Skywarp had plugged him into his cockpit, he knew the moros kept counting his fingers and checking the number he could see against the number he could feel. His hands were perfectly formed, and his processor was receiving all the proper data from his haptics and his optics. But his processor was very young, and very simple still, and this was how he would learn to correlate the data between two separate sensory systems. The moros was mercifully quiet at the moment; when he dropped a thread and forgot a finger or two, or forgot he had feet until one grew cold, frustration would transform him into a terrifying demon-mask of anger. Skywarp wished there was a way to prevent it, but there was no better way for him to learn to keep track of all his body parts. Thundercracker thought it was adorable, and would console the moros with promises of enlisting him as a fierce defender of their planet. Thundercracker would accept only the best in the army alongside him, and it wasn’t a hope for the vrefos’ future so much as a promise he could accomplish anything, one day.  
Surprise was lying in the rolling cradle, lights blinking as he intergrated what he’d learned that day, as the nanites from when Thundercracker nursed him worked their nanite magic. They would supply little extra bits of code, smoothing out the rough edges and using Thundercracker’s meta-cycles of experience with not dying to teach the fragile tenkos’ body how to function more efficiently. Surprise hated to be confined to a cockpit, so he spent all his recharge in the cradle at Skywarp’s side. He more than made up for it when he was awake, always happy to be on somebody’s lap or cuddled up to his twin.  
His twin was just the opposite. That vrefos was the most easygoing of the bunch, content and quiet –as long as he was being held. The second he wasn’t in physical contact with someone, he would cry, sparkbreaking sobs rather than his nosokos’ energon curdling shrieks. But he would accept a adelfos’ hug as easily as a geneos’, one of the few ways having five mori was easier than having one. Right now, he was safely tucked in Thundercracker’s cockpit.  
Starscream was at the hospital with Iridium still. He’d sent Skywarp and Thundercracker a picture of Iridium nursing enthusiastically, the lights on the back of his neck a strong steady green for the first time in his life. If he made it through the night without a crisis, Ratchet promised he could come home. Thundercracker had already reworked the schedule, fitting in time for Iridium to be held and cuddled by all three of his enkyos, for him to spend time nestled next to each of his adelfi in every combination. Starscream though planning ahead each greasing and feeding and bath was a little excessive, but Skywarp, fourth nipio of nine, knew that was the only way to have so many mori at once and take care of their needs.  
And indeed, once the routine was set, Thundercracker moved through it easily, giving each vrefos an equal measure of love and attention. He brought them to Skywarp as well, to lavish affection on, and kept the autoclave and the energon filter running with military efficiency. Skywarp was in awe of how Thundercracker never missed a meal or a nap, never failed to bring Skywarp a cube almost before he knew he was hungry and always had all four mori asleep so they could shower. They had to shower together to be done and dry before the little ones awoke, but that just made it easier with Seekerwings.  
The most amazing thing to Skywarp, who had missed Starscream’s joining to help Novalight and her sieziegos with their single one, was that Thundercracker did everything by himself. Skywarp still couldn’t walk very far without his vision going green, or stand without his feet going numb, or feed the mori except with a bottle. He could only hold one in his cockpit at a time and another on his lap, and greasing them was out of the question. Simply walking from the berth to the couch and back was exhausting. He supposed it was normal, considering how much of his spark was housed in the fragile casings of his tenki, but he still hated that Thundercracker nearly had to wait on him hand and foot, had to take care of their otoki all by himself.  
Thundercracker was just finished loading the autoclave with bottles and sparangi in the kitchen when there was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” he said, as if Skywarp could have answered it without crashing in the hallway. “Don’t make Roller get up.”  
Skywarp traced the edges of Roller’s wings, where nanites from his and Thundercracker’s bodies were building control surfaces, molecule by molecule. Would he have Thundercracker’s thick armour, or Skywarp’s lighter plating? Only time would tell, thought Skywarp wouldn’t mind either.  
Thundercracker stalked in, heavy wings unhappy, face a polite mask of false happiness, followed by a large shadow on the wall and footsteps not nearly heavy enough to match. Was it Skyfire? Starscream’s adelfos was big enough, light enough on his feet, but as far as Skywarp knew, Thundercracker liked him. And then the mech came into view, and what was left of Skywarp’s spark spun faster in its casing.  
Megatron.  
“Don’t get up,” Thundercracker said. “It’ll wake the mori. I’ll get some energon.”  
“This is not Starscream,” Megatron said, very quietly. Skywarp probably wasn’t supposed to hear it.  
“I’m sorry, you said you wanted to see ‘him.’ Forgive me for assuming you meant your pallakos.” Thundercracker didn’t sound the least bit sorry. At all. Skywarp didn’t really care. Megatron was here.  
Megatron came forward, hesitantly, giving the big one a wide berth. “I did not know you were home,” he said.  
Skywarp, hands still moving automatically over Roller’s wings, shrugged. “It’s really busy with four of them.” And with Skywarp himself too drained to take care of anything but whichever moros Thundercracker placed in his arms.  
“Four?”  
“Starscream’s with the other one at the hospital still. They won’t let him home until he can eat by himself.” Skywarp didn’t mention the other three, the avegi Megatron had seen rogime, the vrefi that didn’t survive. It was obvious enough that they hadn’t made it, and the grief was too fresh, too raw. He couldn’t bear anyone, even his pallakos, even his adelfi to touch the wound.  
“Ah.” Megatron sat on the couch next to Skywarp. “You have named them?”  
“Iridium’s with Starscream. Starscream named him,” Skywarp said. “Thundercracker has Twin, and Surprise is in the cradle. He doesn’t like cockpits. This is Roller.”  
“Roller? Like Optimus’..?”  
Skywarp shook his head. “He likes to transform and roll when he’s asleep.”  
“Ah.” Megatron shifted his weight. “And that one?” he asked, pointing to the one on the floor.  
“We don’t have a name for him yet,” Skywarp shrugged. “It’s hard.”  
“It is not forever. He will only use it until he comes of age and chooses his permanent designation,” Megatron reminded him.  
Skywarp shrugged again. “But the other ones, Surprise and Twin, were easy. And Roller let us know right away, and Starscream named Iridium. This one is harder. Thundercracker keeps trying out new ones but nothing much sounds right.”  
“It will come,” Megatron said. The vrefos on the floor stared up at the Lord High Protector.  
“You can pick him up, if you want,” Skywarp said, cuddling Roller close. He couldn’t quite remember what was next on the schedule. He hoped it was a nap.  
“No, I must be going,” Megatron stood up so fast, Skywarp feared he’d scare the mori. But the vrefos on the floor just wiggled sideways, to keep Megatron in his view. “I only came by to discuss something with Starscream of great importance.”  
“Oh, okay.” Skywarp tried to keep his disappointment out of his voice.  
Megatron bent and kissed the top of his helm. “Only the imminent invasion of our home planet itself keeps me from you,” he promised.  
“I know.” Skywarp tilted his face up and received another kiss, chaste in front of tenki. “Thank you for keeping us safe.”  
“My most precious star,” Megatron cupped his hand around Skywarp’s head. “I keep this planet safe for your sake, yours alone.”  
Skywarp watched him go, spark swelling with an emotion he could not name. But he was tired, and had nipii to take care of, and Megatron had made time to come see him. That would have to be good enough.  
And then Thundercracker brought him a cube, and told him it was time for everyone to nap, and while he was lulling the big one to sleep with his engine’s purr, Skywarp couldn’t help leaning against his shoulder and taking a nap of his own.

* * *

  
Skywarp did not run down the hallway. He was very proud of that. He also physically couldn’t, not yet, and teleporting was sadly out of the question. So he walked, down the hospital hallway, and sort-of listened to see if Starscream was nattering on about anything important.  
He wasn’t.  
He wasn’t, and there was the door, and when he went inside, Ambulon was holding his precious tiniest koros. Ambulon held him out and Skywarp took him and held him and let Starscream deal with the rest.  
Skywarp found the chair and sat in it, cradling his nipio close. “You’re coming home today,” he said. The vrefos looked past his left shoulder, unimpressed, but he clutched the finger Skywarp tried to poke him with. It was a little scary and a lot cool how good the moros was at reaching for things he couldn’t even see.  
“And you’ll get to see your nosoki again, do you miss them?” Skywarp asked. “I think they’ve missed you.” Primus below, he was so small, but Ratchet said he could come home and Skywarp trusted him. “I’ve missed you.”  
With him over Skywarp’s spark, one of the bands constricting it eased. He repeated to himself that despite his size, his son was ready to come home. That he had received his first upgrade, that he could eat and regulate his own temperature and his spark would stop overloading now.  
“Thundercracker misses you too,” Skywarp continued. The dark optics were pretty cute, too, once he got used to them. They looked to be red, unlike the others who were all blue-eyed. He hadn’t gotten a chance to look, really look at this one like the others.  
“Shiny Cybertron, I’ve missed you,” Skywarp repeated, marveling at how he looked so much like the red one, like both twins, like the biggest and like none of them. The maridos was perfectly formed despite his size, shiny white and gold with small wings, with red and blue stripes, his plating tight against his chassis and no sparklight leaking out. No more wires, no more tubes, no gaps where he didn’t have quite enough protoform. For a few minutes, Skywarp lost himself in the clean lines of the moros, committing his angles to memory all over again. He found the direction the moros liked his back rubbed, the reflexes of his hands and feet. The vrefos reached for Skywarp, and Skywarp couldn’t deny him, propped him up against his shoulder.  
“Everything’s gonna be awesome now,” he promised. “I’ll make it work somehow.” And then he simply held the moros, for as long as he wanted, without worrying about fuel lines or fragile plating, and listened to the strong steady spin of integrating systems.  
“You should feed him before we go,” Starscream said, startling Skywarp and plonking a bottle on his lap. Going, right, they were taking him home, where he belonged, with his other adelfi. “Once he’s ready, we can leave.”  
Skywarp nodded, and shifted the moros around. The little one took the bottle readily, suckling at it with a vengeance. Starscream had taught him how, patiently feeding him energon one drop at a time, until he got the hang of swallowing, and then of sucking it from the bottle himself. It was a small miracle, something Ratchet said not to count on, but Starscream was awesome like that and this moros was a stubborn one. Stubborn, and helped by the extra feeding tube Ratchet had installed, to ensure he got enough fuel.  
Still, the bottle was a special low-flow one, to keep him from drowning in it, and his fuel tank was only big enough for half the energon. All too soon, he was turning his head away, fists coming up to fold across his chest. Skywarp pulled out a sparangos and wiped away a few stray drops on the vrefos’ chin.  
Skywarp popped open his cockpit and tucked the nipio in. He connected the port, and he could feel the vrefos’ contentment, joy, recognition of his spark. And Skywarp spread his hand over the tiny body, lost in the sacred moment where his code curled around the otokos’, when they were as close as two mechs could get, when his spark sped up to pulse in sync with the fragile ember he carried. The vrefos drifted into recharge, and Skywarp could feel little bits of data float up as he defragged; the sound of Starscream’s humming, Ambulon’s heavy steps shaking the floor, Ratchet’s fingers, deft and gentle. He could feel the pull on his systems as his body took over what it could from the moros', giving his fresh components a rest.  
Then Starscream was talking to him, tugging on his arm, and Skywarp came back down to Cybertron reluctantly. “Let’s go,” Starscream said, and it sounded like he was sick of repeating it even if it was the first time Skywarp had heard. Skywarp stood up.  
And then his vision went grey, and his tactile net blinked, and he didn’t sit back down so much as collapse like his legs had been cut out from under him. Starscream whirled around, and Skywarp saw how bright his optics were, and with strength he hadn’t known he had, Skywarp snagged Starscream’s wrist.  
“I’m okay,” he promised, using his grip to lever himself back up again, slower. “I just stood up too fast.”  
Starscream glared at him, and shook his hand off, and for a moment Skywarp was afraid he was going to argue. But he just turned for the door, and harrumphed, and said, “If you pass out in the taxi, I’m leaving you.”  
Getting downstairs and into the taxi took far more of Skywarp’s reserves than he thought it would. He offered Starscream a rueful smile as he slumped in the seat, and Starscream covered his face with his hand in a gesture Skywarp usually got from Thundercracker. “Upgrade means he drains more,” Starscream said, knowing what Skywarp was thinking in his creepy borderline psychic way.  
Skywarp nodded, and let his head fall back, and the next thing he knew Starscream was towing him inside by the arm. Skywarp let himself be manhandled through the door and passed off to a much gentler Thundercracker, let himself be led to the couch and pushed down. Only when he felt the first twitches against the inside of his cockpit did he pull himself out of standby-fog.  
The little one wanted out, and Skywarp was happy to oblige. Thundercracker was standing there with a bottle, and as Skywarp took it from him, he remembered that Thundercracker had not actually held this one yet.  
“Do you want to feed him?” Skywarp asked. The mori were, after all, as much Thundercracker’s as Starscream’s, almost as much as Skywarp’s own.  
But Thundercracker shook his head, saying, “There will be time. I have to feed He Who Insists On Sleeping In Alt-Mode anyways.”  
“You are not allowed to name them,” Starscream yelled from the kitchen. “He’s Roller, deal with it.”  
“What’s the big one’s name now?” Skywarp asked with a grin. The little one wasn’t turning down the bottle, but he wasn’t starving. Though he was mostly playing with the spout, it was preferable to if he had been desperate and easily frustrated.   
“The big one’s He Who Needs To Upgrade His Patience Module. And that one’s He Who Flies Over The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death.”  
“His name is Iridium, don’t listen to him,” Starscream said, nodding at the little one while he handed Roller and a bottle to Thundercracker. The blue mech sat next to Skywarp and began to feed the moros.  
“Iridium is easier to say,” Skywarp said. “What’s it mean?”  
“It sounds scientific.” Thundercracker lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Starscream didn’t explain it?”  
“It’s not my fault you two are uneducated buffons.” Starscream set the twins on Skywarp’s lap, around Iridium. Twin immediately rolled over and flopped an arm across Iridium’s legs. “Name the big one, Skywarp, please,” Starscream added as he left.  
Skywarp couldn’t. How could he give his vrefos a name, even one that would only last until he reached his maturity? How could he sum up everything about his wonderful tiny stranger when he barely knew him? Starscream returned with the last vrefos in one hand and a cube in the other. “Hey,” he said, tucking the vrefos between Skywarp’s arm and his wing. “I didn’t mean right now this nanoklik.”  
Skywarp looked down at the moros, drifting in and out of standby. He’d kept Skywarp alive, given him a reason to stay alive in the lab and after, when he thought he’d never be clean again, and after that, when he realized the world expected him to just keep flying. How could he ever impose a name on his little hero?  
Instead, he eased the bottle from Iridium’s mouth and sat him up. Thundercracker plonked Roller against his other wing. Then both Seekers stood back and looked at the little group. Starscream smirked, but Thundercracker took his hand where Skywarp wasn’t supposed to be able to see.  
And then Skywarp realized he had all his kori, was holding all his kori, for the first time. And they were all healthy and happy and alive, not something he’d ever take for granted again.  
He looked up at the couple, and reached out with his free hand, just a little, enough to ignore if he was being weird. But he wanted his whole family with him, together at last.

 


	11. Glossary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief glossary of terms used, with apologies to the Greek language.

Most of these are family terms. Family terms fall in two sets.  
The first set is for people who share physical code. They are more likely to be physically compatible.  
Pedios is the person who has split his or her spark.  
Sporos is the person who donated code.  
Koros is the resulting person.  
Enkyos is the person who feeds a mech from his own body, providing both nutrients and additional code.  
Goneos is a person who has provided any of the above.  
By the time the mech is weaned, it is impossible to tell the difference between a pedio, a sporo, and an enkyo.  
Otokos is a person who has received code..  
And finally, nosokos is a person who shares a goneos.  
The second set of family terms is for people who have legal relations, but no medical ones.  
Trefos is a legal parent, who has donated no bodily resources, but still provides food, shelter and comfort.  
Teknos is a child who has received no bodily resources, but has received food, shelter, or comfort.  
Adelfos is for a person who shares a trefos but not a goneos.  
There are a number of terms describing a specific stage of Cybertronian development.  
Moros is a general term for dependents.  
Avegos is the very first stage, when a mech rests in his first alt-mode. All mechs have the same alt-mode at first, an armored sphere.  
Maridos refers to the second stage, where a mech is utterly helpless.  
Vrefos refers to all mechs dependent on another for fuel filtering.  
Nipios is a term for a mech who has not yet settled into his final frame.  
The first transformation is referred to as the rogiming.  
There are a few more terms used in this fic  
Sieziegos for a mech who has pledged his eternal love and loyalty, his life, his property, and his most sacred honor.  
Pallakos for a mech who has pledged faithfulness in the berth for a set timeframe, and his sincere love of another.  
And finally, sparganos is a combination of burp cloth, receiving blanket, and towel.  
All of these are pluralized by changing the -os to -i.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
